A Distant Shore
by Experimental
Summary: Inspired by Wildwolf's 'Fall of Angels'. Mitani and Izuru have grown accustomed to shinigami life, so at first it seems nothing out of the ordinary when they are sent to retrieve the soul of a WWII vet. Contains Saint Michel characters.
1. Teaser: 1 January 2001

A/N: The concept for "A Distant Shore" began as a side story to Wildwolf's "The Fall of Angels"; and while it might digress from that a bit as it goes on, I must start off by mentioning that this is based on her ideas for the characters, namely that Mitani and Izuru become shinigami assigned to Sector 1, Okinawa, after their deaths in volume 4. Other than that I don't think it's a prerequisite, but if you like the characters and haven't already, you gotta read "Fall".

* * *

A Distant Shore

They had been lucky enough to get New Year's Eve off that year. The changing of the year always saw a great influx of souls brought to Meifu through violent means, but this 31 December left them without an open investigation.

For sentimental reasons they returned to Nagasaki, only realizing when they got there how few good memories the place actually held and how little it had ever truly felt like home. Watching bored young people at various levels of intoxication sing karaoke through drifting tendrils of cigarette smoke, the year changed. A year ago would have found them in a small hotel room in Naha in front of an equally small television set, drinking awamori out of cheap wooden cups as they watched old enka stars on that year's Red and White Song Competition and waxed nostalgic. Mitani sang along with the lyrics that scrolled along the bottom of the screen, and Izuru laughed because he knew the songs in the first place and downed another cup. His cheeks were flushed, but somehow his eternally seventeen-year-old body held liquor better than his partner's. Neither would say it aloud, but the inevitable silence made it clear they both thought about it every 31 December: it had been almost a year since their deaths, or two as the case may be. Or three.

Now in the karaoke bar in Nagasaki, Izuru poured himself another cup of warm sake obtained on a falsified ID that put him at the magical age of twenty. Technically, it was accurate. If it had been possible to retrieve the one he had had when alive it would have said the same thing. He was lucky now; another decade and he wouldn't be able to pull it off without raising a few suspicious eyebrows, even if some thirty-year-old rock star could pass as eighteen. Sipping his drink with one hand, he flipped through the song list with the other. Apparently he did it for the thrill of seeing a favorite song scattered among the multitudes. He never sang anymore, not even along with the TV. Not since he had died and become a shinigami. In the faint, wavering light of their table's candle his downturned eyes looked tired beyond his age. That was the thought that would not leave Mitani alone as he rubbed his own exhausted eyes.

It was after two in the morning, 1 January 2001, when they left. Shoulders scrunched, they tucked their chins into their mufflers against the mild cold they had grown unaccustomed to after years spent drifting between Okinawa's warmth and the eternal spring of Meifu. They mused on how inconvenient it would be if someone from their lives were to recognize them on the street, but they didn't care enough at this hour to disguise themselves from the gazes of the living. They passed brightly-lit storefront displays attempting to entice customers in, and attempting to make up for lost sales even years after the burst of the economic bubble.

Somewhere along the way Izuru slipped his arm beneath Mitani's and leaned close as they walked, heedless of what any passerby might think. There was no need for him to say it, because the same thing was on both their minds: Without something better to distract them, their thoughts returned inevitably to the year they had met and fallen into a forbidden relationship that far surpassed anything appropriate for a teacher and student, and died. In some ways, that time seemed to them now like a nightmare they had merely awakened from; in others, what was dreamlike was this afterlife neither of them had once believed in, let alone been able to fathom, to which they feared—on the worst days even hoped for—a sharp, waking end, and a return to the agony of living.

The fountains in a bayside park were lifeless. The sea stretched out black and invisible before them, only the rush of the tide telling them it was there. Somewhere out on the dark bay was that island that haunted their dreams, but for now it was out of sight and mind. They leaned against each other for support, two drunks on a park bench. What had seemed like a good idea a short time ago did not so much now. They must have thought that upon returning to this place they would feel something anchoring them to it, as one with a strong connection to his roots feels upon approaching his hometown. The numbness they felt in actuality should not have come as a surprise, but it did.

"What do you want to do now?" Izuru asked him.

"I don't think there's much open at this hour," said Mitani.

"You've been saying how you'd like to go back to the cathedral."

"But services probably ended hours ago."

The tension hung thick in the air in the ensuing silence as the same dreadful idea occurred to them both. Out of a sense of duty, Mitani carefully began: "We could go _there_, if you're feeling up to it, just to look around if nothing else—"

"I never want to see that place again." Izuru's voice was loud in the still air, as though the thought were a lone scavenging animal that needed chasing away. In a sense, that was how ominous it was to him. The simple mention was all that was needed to set his mind. "I'd rather just go home."

Home. A value equal to Meifu, the land of the dead. That was still a strange concept after three years.

Every once in a while, at times like these, it hit Mitani as something alien. 


	2. Confession

Usually Mitani slept like the dead. He had fallen into the sinful habit of sleeping late, a complete turn-around from his almost monastic life at Saint Michel preparatory school when his internal alarm clock had been set to six. The faint sound and smell of coffee percolating in the next room was enough to coax him awake. Stretching and temporarily losing hearing, he glanced at the digital clock. It was eight past seven, earlier than he thought, in the middle of May. The sun had been hitting him earlier each day. Despite these ever-blooming cherries and idyllic April weather, the designers of this world that never aged could not keep the changing of the seasons out of the sky. Reluctantly, he climbed out of bed and walked out to the living area of the apartment he shared with Izuru.

It was a small apartment with two bedrooms, which had been necessary when they first started in Enma-cho, and the awkwardness and guilt of sharing an afterlife had prevented them from showing the affection they once shared. In three years they had never returned to the exact place they had been in in life, but both tacitly agreed that was probably for the best. In either case, it seemed that half the time that second bedroom went unused, but they did not ask to find another place, even if another place would have been more cost-effective. For Mitani, this arrangement kept him from having to explain their situation to coworkers. They were familiar with the two's case already, and that was where he liked to leave it.

The offending percolator sat on the counter of the bar. The shine of newness on the stainless steel stood out in stark contrast to the old counter tops, a wheaty color from the seventies that never looked completely clean and probably never had. A gray suit jacket was hanging neatly on the low back of one of the barstools, a tie folded over that. Inside the kitchenette, Izuru stood before the stove in a fresh shirt and ironed gray slacks, making scrambled eggs. Mitani dared not say so out loud, but he was dressed like he was going to school. His shoulders as seen from behind seemed at ease as he turned off the stove and poured his share of the eggs onto a plate, plucking a piece of toast from the toaster when it dinged, putting his thumb to his mouth when he accidentally touched the metal rack. It still seemed a rare thing to see him at peace. Truly at peace, not that which he faked when they were together to ease Mitani's conscience.

He turned and started. "Sensei. You're up early," he said, smiling quickly.

"You took the words right out of my mouth."

"I have that thing today, remember?" said Izuru by way of explanation. He had remained as vague as that since he first told his partner about his appointment. "I wanted to get my head together beforehand, you know? You can go back to sleep if you want: the chief won't expect us today until after lunch, I think." Looking up as he retrieved a couple of coffee mugs he said on second thought: "I'm sorry if I woke you."

"It's okay." Mitani took the mugs and filled them while Izuru slipped behind him and took his seat at the bar. "I was waking up anyway."

They talked shop as they drank their coffee and Izuru ate. It wasn't case work, at least, or the news, and by the time he was finished Mitani recognized a smile of calm confidence on Izuru's face, like he used to have when he went into student council president mode. Assured Mitani would take care of his dishes after he left, he fixed his tie without a mirror, and Mitani jokingly asked whether Tatsumi knew he had an interview with another division; to which Izuru said he sounded like an old nag and offered to buy a houseplant while he was out to keep Mitani company.

"Someone has to," Mitani said to the first accusation, touching his arm when he stood to leave. It took an effort to restrain himself from saying on reflex, I'm your teacher, but Izuru did look like a student again in that suit, rather than the salaryman he had probably been going for. "But nix on the plant. I'd just kill it anyway."

"Well . . ." Izuru sighed. "Wish me luck?"

It would help if Mitani knew what for, but he humored him anyway. "Good luck."

—o—

Izuru managed to kill an hour before heading in. His meeting wasn't scheduled until ten, but the thought of spending that extra time with Mitani had not helped his concentration one bit. He needed a mental distraction, and the cherry blossoms and warm, late-spring sunlight outside the main building were certainly that. Afterwards, and grabbing a cheerful-looking bottle of orange juice from the vending machine on the way in, he made his way to the office.

He found Watari sitting backwards in his chair, listening to Terazuma whose desk was next to Izuru and Mitani's. "Then I was reading in this article," Terazuma was saying in a hushed tone of voice, "that fourteen is this real unstable age for girls, because they're going through all these emotional and physical transformations. So their hormones are out of whack. They did this survey of women eighteen to thirty-five and something like one-in-five lost their virginity when they were fourteen. Are you with me so far?"

"Uh-huh. . . ." Watari didn't seem to be particularly comfortable with where this was going. "Where exactly, if I may be so bold, did you read this article?"

"It was a respectable magazine!" Terazuma acted offended, then recanted under his breath: "Okay, it was in Biteki." Just the thought of a macho, ex-police officer like him reading a women's beauty magazine put Watari in stitches, which Terazuma stubbornly ignored. "What I'm _trying_ to get at is, what if someone dies when they're fourteen? Does that mean their hormones are gonna be out of whack forever?"

"You're the one complainin' 'bout hormones?" Watari managed between breaths. His owl 003 turned to acknowledge Izuru, blinking slowly as though asking for his sympathy.

Terazuma shot the other a nasty look.

"I'm serious about this, Watari! I mean, what if there's something I'm supposed to be getting? Girls always want you to _infer_ something, but they never tell you _what_ outright. You wouldn't say I'm insensitive, would you?"

"Nah, everyone knows what a softie you are, Hajime-_chan_—"

"Isn't it funny," Izuru said loudly, causing the two to look up, "how you can start any question, no matter how absurd, with the phrase, 'I was reading this article,' and no one will think anything weird of it?"

"Mornin', Okazaki-kun," Watari greeted him cheerfully, tilting his head back. Izuru scratched 003 behind the ear as he shot Terazuma the indifferent glare he had mastered as a second-year student body president. Tsuzuki had once told him he looked like Hisoka when he did it.

"Having girl trouble, Hajime?" he asked the former detective. "Again?"

"I don't know how it works in the bourgeois schools, but talk like that to your superiors won't win you any points in this department, kid," came the inevitable sarcastic reply, which made Izuru's smile even wider. Terazuma tapped a cigarette to the top of the pack and pulled it out between his lips, despite not being able to light it in the building. "We're holding your seat hostage until you start talking," he said, pointing to a flabbergasted Watari. "I suppose you'd know a lot about girls, eh, mister hotshot student body president."

"Come on," Izuru quipped back. "You know it was an all-boys school."

"And that's supposed to keep 'em away? See? Look, even the snappy way he dresses . . ."

"You just don't like the way your partner stares after him," Watari said. "Nice suit, by the way. What's the occasion?"

Izuru shrugged. "I have an appointment this morning to see the . . . Earl or something?"

"The _Count_?" The other two looked at him simultaneously in shock, prompting Izuru to ask, "What? Is he that bad?"

"Okazaki," Watari said, "did anyone tell you about the Count when this first came up? I mean, this will be your first time speaking with him, right? Are you sure you know what to expect?"

Izuru furrowed his brows. "The chief told me he was invisible, which I'll admit is kind of hard to imagine. But other than that it sounds no different from going to confession. The chief says I shouldn't be too worried about it, anyway, that he probably just wants to ask me how I've been settling in."

"Confession?" Terazuma said. "Kid, someone should have told you sooner. The Count is easily the shadiest, most lecherous character in all of Enma-cho. He's even worse than Tsuzuki, and that's saying something."

As he said so he jabbed his thumb over his shoulder at the man in question, who shot back without missing a beat: "I resent that!"

"A good-lookin' young man such as yourself is perfect fodder for someone like him to take advantage of if you're not careful," Watari added to the other's enthusiastic nod. "It gets awful lonely in that big house of his, and that does strange things to people. This is much worse than some pervy priest in the confessional."

"And for goodness sake, whatever you do, don't ask to borrow money!"

Izuru couldn't help smiling at how concerned they were about protecting his virtue from this count character. He could not tell how much of what they said they seriously believed and how much was exaggeration; but if they knew what the atmosphere had been like at Saint Michel, they would have found they had little to worry about. "Thanks for the warning, but I think I can handle him. In any case," Izuru added quickly when it looked like the other two were going to rebut, "I'll have Kurosaki with me to make sure nothing gets out of hand."

As if on cue, when he turned he came face-to-face with the boy in question.

A stack of files tucked under one arm, Hisoka looked a little surprised to see him so soon. "Oh, Okazaki . . . Are you ready to head over?"

"There's nothing else I can do at this point but get this over with," Izuru said, while the other dropped the files on the desk with a huff and motioned for his partner to take over for him.

"So what does the Count want with the kid?" Terazuma asked after Hisoka on their way out.

"Like I'd tell you," Izuru shot back easily enough, but in truth he was a little unsure himself. When Hisoka asked him the same question a few minutes later, he said rather uncertainly, "Well, Chief Konoe told me this was nothing out of the ordinary—he said to think of it like a regular psych exam or something, but I'm not so sure about that."

Hisoka nodded to himself, taking it in. He seemed to have his own ideas about what this was all about that he wasn't sharing.

"He said the Count likes to have a good idea of who all are bringing in the souls he watches over." Izuru tilted his head. "Why? Is there really cause for concern like the others were saying?"

"It's not that," Hisoka said with a small sigh. "Personally I find the Count rather innocuous. He comes off a bit strong, but from an empathic point of view, you can't take everything he says or does at face value. Immortals tend to get bored real quick and sometimes their way of counteracting that can seem pretty eccentric. You'll find that out soon enough if you haven't already. But your situation . . ."

When he trailed off, Izuru sobered and prompted, "What about my situation?"

Hisoka looked him over for a moment—it felt to Izuru as though he were looking _through_ him—before deciding on: "I think you already know the reason you're here."

Perhaps Izuru had expected something different, as he didn't catch on to the other boy's meaning right away. As the gravel of the drive crunched under their feet, however, and he got his first close-up look at the Castle of Candles, Izuru did not have the luxury of dwelling on that. The vague sense of nervousness that came from knowing what to expect but being sure it would turn out to be all wrong, like the nervousness that came before a test, returned.

For a brief moment, stepping into the manor's foyer felt like stepping into the foyer of his old school, Saint Michel. The unpleasant wave of deja vu that followed was thankfully brief, however, as Hisoka introduced him to the strange, decaying English butler who called himself Watson, and they waited while Watson went to inform the Count of their arrival.

The man—if that was in fact what he was—who arrived to greet them with magnanimously outstretched hands a short minute later had to be the Count of the manor, because he was, as Izuru had been warned, invisible but for his gloves and half-mask. "Ah, Kurosaki," he said in an equally magnanimous tone of voice as he floated toward them, "how good it is to see you again! But . . . you didn't happen to bring Tsuzuki along with you?"

Hisoka rolled his eyes and gestured toward Izuru. "Count, this is Okazaki Izuru from my department, Section One. You called for him."

"So I did, so I did." The Count turned to Izuru with his empty gaze that nonetheless seemed to bore holes through the boy.

Izuru put out his hand. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir."

"Oh, likewise, of course." The gloved hand extended as though from thin air to take Izuru's, but there was certainly a hand inside, shaking his heartily, even if it could not be seen. "My," said the Count, "he certainly is a fine-looking lad, isn't he?"

Taken aback, Izuru couldn't help a laugh as he turned to Hisoka.

Who crossed his arms over his chest. "Don't worry. He said the exact same thing about me when we met."

"How old were you when you died, lad?"

"Seventeen," Izuru said.

"Seventeen. . . ." The Count nodded to himself. "A rough age, to be sure, in life or in death. It's always a tragedy when a person passes with his whole life ahead of him, but on the other hand at least you are healthy as an ox and will always have your youth and beauty. Always look on the bright side of death, I say. You'd be surprised how much there is to appreciate. . . . Eh, you're not empathic as well, are you?"

"No, sir. Can't say that I am."

"Well then. . . ." And with that the Count put a conspiratorial arm about Izuru's shoulders as he said, "Now, if you don't mind, Kurosaki, I need to speak to Mr Okazaki alone for a little while."

"Not at all," Hisoka shrugged, then said after Izuru: "I'll just be waiting here until you're finished," and took a seat in one of the richly upholstered chairs lining the foyer walls.

With one arm around his shoulders, the Count took Izuru on what seemed to be the art tour of his manor, explaining the history of the place and its predominantly European trappings. The gist of it had something to do with the European craze in the 1870s and '80s, the bug of which—as the saying goes—had bit the Count hard. Aside from the pestering thought that Mitani would have really appreciated this, Izuru wasn't really paying attention, as the tour seemed designed merely to make him comfortable more than anything else, something that Izuru couldn't help thinking was wasted on himself.

"Now then," the Count said with a sigh that signaled they were getting down to business, "I assume you have some idea as to why you are here."

"To be honest, sir, not entirely. When Chief Konoe set up the appointment he was rather vague—"

"No, no." The Count shook his head. "I mean why you are here in Meifu. Why you are a shinigami."

Of course, Izuru thought. It would eventually come to that. "Tsuzuki and Kurosaki, when I first arrived here, they told me it was because my attachment to living was strong. But I don't really believe that."

"And why don't you?"

"Because if my attachments were strong, it makes more sense to be reincarnated straight away, or whatever happens to souls like mine. I think they just said it to take the shock off of dying and waking up again, realizing there's something after, because the truth is I didn't have a strong will to live. I wanted to die. Even if my body was not under my own control, still, when I really thought about it, I wanted to die. I didn't think there was any point living if I couldn't be with Mitani-sensei, and if he wouldn't love me . . ." Suddenly self-conscious, he trailed off. "I'm sorry. I must sound . . ."

"Must sound what, Okazaki?" The Count's sympathetic tone surprised him slightly. "I'm familiar with your case. And besides, look who you're talking to. I've been around a _long_ time, my boy. You can't offend me."

Right, Izuru told himself. This is just like confession. You might be talking to the Count, but he can't judge you; only God and Enma have the final say.

"I guess my point is, every day lots of people die before their time when all they really want is to live, and they get to go to heaven. I wanted nothing more than to die and I got stuck here, in this mimicry of life. On top of that, I made a pact with a devil, which can't be much different from declaring your own personal war on God. I don't even know what I was trying to prove anymore, but I know this is my punishment for it. The pact was bad enough, and the lust and such; but the Church teaches us that suicide is an unpardonable sin, so I figure this is what I get for it."

"This isn't Hell, Okazaki. This place is closer to what your Church calls Purgatory. But for those who stay here, it may as well be. Those who squander the precious gift of life, those who throw it away selfishly, must be made to understand how important it is."

"And we do that by taking the lives of others."

"And saving lives that would otherwise be taken needlessly," the Count said quickly, ignoring the boy's sarcasm. "You mustn't forget that. How many souls have you saved from a fate just like yours?"

Plenty, Izuru had to admit. "But isn't even that just another part of my punishment?" He shook his head, and looked down at his hands, and the permanent pink rings in the skin around the two outermost fingers of each one. "Just about every investigation that's been handed down to us since we came here reminds us either of my sins or Sensei's. It's like Enma just wants to torture us by rubbing our faces in what we did."

"Enma has little to do with it."

"Doesn't he? Are you saying I should blame God, then? The thing is, sir, all this pain—I know it's supposed to teach me a lesson, but it doesn't change _anything_. I know what I did was wrong, I know I made some decisions that were incredibly stupid and selfish and ended up hurting the very person I wanted to protect, but the fact of the matter is, if I had a second chance, I'd just kill myself all over again. Dying was what gave my life meaning, as strange as that sounds."

"Then you haven't learned anything since starting here, in other words."

"It's not that, per se. It just isn't sinking in like I feel it's supposed to."

Izuru was surprised by himself. Was that how he felt? He had not been aware of those feelings when he stepped inside the manor only a short while before, yet when he thought back to the last three years—even that very morning, eating breakfast with Mitani—he found he had been carrying the weight of that truth around from their first case as shinigami. He had just never had an opportunity to put it into words, until the moment it all spilled out.

"May I ask you how you find your life in Meifu?" the Count asked him. "Putting the nature of your cases aside."

Izuru had to think about that for a moment, mentally shift gears before he could answer. "Alright, I guess. I've had no problems adjusting to being dead, if that's what you mean. I know it sounds strange after what I just said, but most of the time I actually like it here. I hardly ever feel physical pain, fatigue or hunger, I'm never too hot or too cold. . . . I guess I would say it's a pleasant existence if you take away the guilt of having to watch the suffering of the living."

"And the reminders of your past sins."

"Maybe it's the Catholic in me making it that way. Tsuzuki and Kurosaki don't seem to have the same problem."

Izuru was not watching for it, so he did not notice the Count's hesitation at the mention of the former's name, as though he were resisting a strong urge to correct Izuru. He said instead, moving on: "Have you experienced any other problems?"

"Like what?"

"Anything out of the ordinary. Changes in your daily routine you can't explain, for example, or issues with using the skills you've acquired here in the field. Anything that might have affected your ability to perform as a shinigami."

"The only problem with my skills is that they've fallen so far behind Sensei's." It was a point of embarrassment for Izuru when he allowed himself to dwell on it—definitely not something he brought up in regular conversation. "Maybe it's fairer to say he's progressed in what he's able to do whereas I just continue to get by with the basics. Sensei says it's due to a lack of effort, which is just like a professor." Izuru snorted as he said as though to himself, "Maybe things just came too easily to me in Saint Michel, I didn't stop to think that maybe I didn't have as much to do with my own success as I thought. I just always thought the student was doing something wrong if he didn't surpass the teacher."

"Then there wouldn't be any point in having a teacher, now, would there?"

Feeling foolish for not thinking the obvious himself, Izuru didn't answer.

"Could it be you fear growing stronger? Sometimes, a shinigami's subconscious resists the idea of being deceased for some reason or another so strongly it affects his ability to function properly in the system, in which case he may not even be aware of the reason he is being held back, even if that shinigami consciously wants very much to improve."

"I don't know." He didn't know what the Count was trying to pry out of him by saying so either. "I suppose that's a possibility. But that means in order to get better I would have to alter my subconscious mind, doesn't it?"

"Incidentally, how is your relationship with your partner, Mitani?"

The Count's question threw Izuru for a loop. "Professional relationship or . . . otherwise?" When the Count didn't answer, he resigned himself to the fact he would have to make that distinction himself. He turned his eyes away. _This_ was a bit different from confession: at this point, he used to just lie to the priest. "We get along, but under the surface of things it's . . . awkward. It's not like it used to be, and I'm still trying to decide if that's a good thing or not."

"Do you still sleep together?"

Izuru resisted the instinctual urge to say it was none of his business, but he knew that, in fact, it was, and the Count was not asking for his own titilation. "Occasionally," he admitted quietly. "I know that's probably not helping our respective sentences any, but we can't help it. Even if the urge isn't there like it was in life; I understand now that a lot of what felt so good and right was the devil's doing, and that knowledge sort of puts a damper on things, if you know what I mean. Even more so when you're reminded every day of how you're the one responsible for the other's death in the first place. But I love him." Even if sometimes that feeling was a little hard to come by, he knew it was always there nonetheless. "And I guess that's why, even now, my life doesn't really mean that much to me. Does that sound selfish?"

Though he had no visible mouth to speak of, it was clear to Izuru the Count was smiling at least somewhat when he said, "On the contrary. But . . . that doesn't mean it's helping things either."

Because I love him more than God or even myself, Izuru filled in for him in his mind.

"Just between us, though, don't worry so much about that," the Count said quickly. "You might have heard Enma frowns on homosexual relations, but that's the least of your problems, Okazaki. Really. I know that probably isn't much help to you to put it in those exact words—"

"No, I understand."

"Everyone experiences guilt and regret," the Count told him pointedly, "only to some it comes more readily than to others. It is relatively simple to recognize our sins and stupid mistakes, but repentance is never easy."

Seeing Izuru's inner turmoil in his brow, he squeezed the boy's shoulder in a fatherly gesture. But he did not explain his meaning, but rather went on to ask more about certain cases the pair had been involved in, so that Izuru continued to ponder those words even after their time was over and he had rejoined Hisoka in the foyer. He knew how difficult repentance was already, but was that really something he wanted? Wouldn't he first have to feel remorse for what he had done? And he wasn't sure he could. Even the pact with the devil, though possibly his most brainless decision and an offense against God he knew he did not deserve forgiveness for, had granted the one desire of his that had been greater than anything; and was that really something he would have wanted to take back, even knowing what he did now?

"So, how did it go?" Hisoka asked him ambiguously as they walked back to the office.

What could he say, Izuru wondered. He had expressed thoughts in that manor that he had not even been aware of harboring, but he lied, "Quick and painless, just like confession." He turned to his companion. "You look paler than usual, Kurosaki. You don't like the Count? I didn't think your calling him innocuous was that far off."

"I just can't stand to be in that place for long," Hisoka said. "Too many voices; too many emotions."

They walked side by side in silence for a moment before Izuru could keep the thought that was nagging him to himself no longer. "Do you ever read me like that?"

Hisoka paused for a split second. "You mean, your emotions?"

"Something like that."

"Without your asking? That would be rude."

So he did do it. "Come on. I know I don't make a conscious effort to block off my thoughts. Just for the sake of curiosity—"

"Something the Count said back there really got to you that much, huh?"

That time it was Izuru's turn to be caught off his guard. He should have expected that.

Hisoka shrugged as though to say, suit yourself. "If you want the truth, you're a lot more transparent than Mitani. His guilt makes him more guarded, better at hiding things, whereas you tend to project. Really, it doesn't take a lot of effort to read you. I can tell you're used to getting your way all the time, so when you get impatient it shows, and the vanity that runs beneath everything tends to wear on me."

Izuru winced. "Thanks. I think."

"I didn't mean to put it so bluntly, it's just—"

"I asked. I know."

"No, what I really meant to say was," Hisoka amended, "we all get into the habit as shinigami of feeling like everything unpleasant that comes along is because of us, or meant to punish us, we forget how self-centered an outlook that is. Because at other times, even though the facade we show to others is completely different, I feel like you and I are really alike inside. We're too used to depending on ourselves to allow ourselves to depend on others, so it's hard when someone reaches out to you to reach back. It's even harder to admit when we're wrong, when we're so convinced we're right."

That hit so close to home it stung. "Here I thought you just saw me as some spoiled rich kid."

"Hey." Hisoka shrugged. "What do you think I was? That doesn't mean our demons can't be as bad as anyone else's. If anything, they're worse. It's more like . . . Well, you know how they say you always see in others what you're not too proud of in yourself?"

Izuru smiled to himself. "Yeah, I do." That worked the other way too, he thought but didn't say it. What he liked in Mitani often times was what he found lacking in himself. Hearing that from Hisoka reminded him for a moment that even though he had lived a year longer than the other had, he was actually a year Hisoka's junior—almost two years his junior as a shinigami—which was often too easy to forget looking at him. "In any case," Izuru told him, "I want to thank you for agreeing to come out here with me today."

"It's no problem. I figured you asked for me because of my familiarity with your case."

"I feel like I should be indebted to you and Tsuzuki, coming after my soul after the choices I made."

"Don't," Hisoka tried to stop him, but Izuru held up a hand to say it was all right.

"Please, let me feel responsible, even if you were just following orders. It's important to me that I do. But my point was, you were there, at that school. You were in and among my peers, in that atmosphere. Which I guess is why I felt, even if you didn't approve of the decisions I made or who I was, you'd at least be in a better position to understand than anyone else."

"Yeah. Well." Hisoka avoided meeting his gaze. "I'm not going to ask you what you two talked about if you don't want to discuss it."

"Fair enough." Something bothered Izuru about the whole affair, however, which grew like a tumor on his conscience until he had to ask, as matter-of-factly as he was able: "This isn't really as common an occurrence as Chief Konoe wants me to think, is it? The Count asking for one of the Summons Division's employees for a private meeting, I mean."

"No," Hisoka said after a moment.

"Do you think that's cause for concern?"

Another moment of silent contemplation went by before Hisoka said, "Did he tell you you were doing something wrong?"

"Not really." If anything, the Count had been more permissive than Izuru had expected from a figure in his position.

"Then it's probably nothing to worry about. Experience has taught me that unless you're doing something you're not supposed to be doing, it's best as a general rule not to ask too many questions."

They did not discuss the matter any further as they walked back. When Izuru arrived in the office he found Mitani waiting for him, looking enthusiastic as he told Izuru, "We have a case." There wasn't the time or opportunity to ask how his appointment went, which Izuru was, for the moment, thankful for, as he was not so sure how it went himself.

—o—

"The target is one Oshiro Eiki," Chief Konoe told them inside the briefing room as he passed them a dossier across the table. "Male, seventy-two years of age, divorced. He is currently living in a nursing home in Nago, where he was placed after being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. That was three years ago."

"Then he's scheduled to pass away?" Mitani said, looking up from the file.

The chief sighed. "That's just the thing. According to the Kiseki, the cancer should have killed him over a year ago."

"He lived alone and apparently wasn't close to his family," Tatsumi took over, withdrawing something from a file of his own, "so when he finally received medical attention and was diagnosed, after complaining of terrible headaches and blackout episodes, the cancer had already progressed to an inoperable stage. When he had a minor stroke not soon after, his children placed him in a nursing home where he could receive the proper care."

So saying, Tatsumi slid them the sheet in his hand, an MRI scan of a man's cranium. Mitani did not have any formal medical training, but the growth that occupied a relatively large portion of the left side of the subject's brain was obvious at a glance. "Mr Oshiro recovered from the stroke, but as you can see from these images the tumor is putting significant strain on his left temporal lobe, the part of the brain associated with memory and language, resulting in symptoms mimicking those of Alzheimer's disease."

"So his memory is spotty and his language faculties are affected, is what you're saying," Mitani said.

"That is the story as we've heard it. His doctors have also noted a few mild episodes of auditory hallucination. All of which, as you can imagine, makes obtaining an explanation from the man himself somewhat difficult."

"What do you mean, an explanation?" Izuru asked.

"Mr Oshiro should be dead," Tatsumi said simply, "but for some reason we can't understand, he isn't. We know from medical records that he is not on any machine that would be keeping him alive artificially, nor is he on any drug regiment for the cancer aside from the usual cocktail of pain-killers. It would appear that, aside from the tumor, Mr Oshiro is in excellent health. Therefore, as you can imagine, we naturally suspect a metaphysical explanation. In cases like his, there is often a good chance the patient is aware of the reason for his own continued existence."

"Mr Oshiro is what some here call a floating wick: his candle in the Count's manor is completely melted away, but his flame refuses to go out." Chief Konoe folded his hands on the table and leaned over them. "It's a rare case, but when it does happen we often find some sort of pact is to blame, such as with a devil or a _kami_ of some sort. Given your history, Okazaki-kun, Mitani-sensei, I thought you should be warned about that possibility in advance. Nonetheless, your priority is to bring Mr Oshiro's soul back here for judgment and processing. Finding the cause of his condition should be deemed secondary unless necessary to retrieving his soul."

"Like if he doesn't want to go and puts up a fight?" Izuru said the first thing that came to mind, which caused Mitani to look his way. The same thought had occurred to him as well. "The target sounds pretty intent on staying put. Does this mean you're authorizing us to forcibly separate a soul from its body?"

But Konoe shook his head. "I don't think you'll find _that_ to be a problem. Mr Oshiro has attempted suicide several times in the last eighteen months, ever since his name first started appearing in our system. And each time, somehow, he has managed to escape death by the skin of his teeth."

"I've already made arrangements for your stay in Nago," Tatsumi concluded as he followed them out of the room. He handed Izuru the usual envelope with their itinerary, reservations and expenses for the stay. Mitani already had his hands full with the patient's file, from which he could hardly tear his gaze away for more than a few seconds: Oshiro's mysterious condition already had him hooked, the academic inside him yearning for the first chance to take a stab at solving the puzzle. Tatsumi gave them his usual polite yet hollow smile. "If you need anything else, let me know and I'll be happy to help."

Then they parted ways, and Izuru and Mitani headed back to their desk to better examine the contents of their latest case file over a spartan lunch of Cup Noodles.

"It isn't every day we get a case where we have to stop whatever is keeping our target _alive_," Izuru was saying as he read the list of Oshiro's suicide attempts. "Usually it's the other way around. But it sounds like Mr Oshiro wanted to off himself pretty badly."

At the computer, Mitani shrugged. "No doubt he was in a lot of pain. In a situation like that, it's only natural to want to end it."

"Well, he tried just about every option available to him short of jumping off the building. Nothing very creative, of course, just the tried-and-true methods. First he saves up medication for an overdose, so the staff stops giving it to him orally. Then he tries drowning in the bath—also foiled—and hanging himself from the coat hook in his room. An orderly who just happens to be walking by at one in the morning is able to resuscitate him in time. So he locks himself in the bathroom to slit his wrists. The nurses who reported it said they tried the handle for a good five minutes and were just about to bust in the door when it miraculously unlocked itself—their words." Izuru looked up. "Don't you think Mr Oshiro could have just had second thoughts?"

Mitani turned away from the computer screen at that and raised an eyebrow. "Every time?"

"It doesn't seem to fit, does it?" Izuru turned back to the file. "The last attempt on his life he made he stuck a pen in his own neck. Somehow he missed any major artery. After that there's nothing. He could have tried any of those methods again, but it's like he just gives up after that. Like one of those vacuum robots." Izuru slapped the back of one hand against the palm of the other. "He hits a wall, so he just turns around and tries a different way."

Mitani found he didn't know what to say. It was not as though he had no opinion on their target's mental state, just that there was something about hearing Izuru speak of suicide so casually and rationally that bothered him.

"It seems like he went out of his way to make sure no one would stop him," the boy continued obliviously, "yet no matter what he did, someone always did. Even locked doors were no deterrent. Either someone upstairs was looking out for the old man or he's incredibly lucky. Or unlucky, I guess, as the case may be." Izuru knitted his brows. "Didn't Tatsumi say he was hearing voices or something? Is it really that natural to go to the lengths he did, or could something have been forcing him to commit suicide?"

Like something had Izuru? Mitani wondered. "At the same time it's extending his life? It's feasible, I suppose, but not consistent."

"No, I guess it isn't . . ."

He trailed off, staring at the target's file, and Mitani could guess where his train of thought was drifting. It was never far from his own mind either. At that, and somewhat distracted by the suit the boy still wore, he remembered the appointment Izuru had been mysterious about that morning, and how he had not yet had a chance to ask about it. "By the way," he tried as nonchalantly as possible, "I never got to ask you how that 'thing' of yours went today."

"Pretty well, I guess." Izuru was keeping his gaze stubbornly glued to the papers.

So it was none of Mitani's business, in other words. He had not been a teacher for very long in life, but as one he was used to knowing when to step back and stop asking questions he had no right to ask. On the other hand, he was also familiar with the worry and curiosity that came with the position that at times could be almost too much to bear in silence. "I don't mean to pry," he said, which, of course, he did, "but now that it's over and done with, do you mind telling me what it was all about?"

He held his breath as he watched Izuru think about it. "The Count of the Castle of Candles asked to meet me," he said. "He had some questions about a few of our past cases that he thought I could clear up. No big deal."

But there was more to it than that, Mitani knew. If that's all it was, he couldn't help thinking, why didn't the Count ask for me as well? If our case files were the issue, I might have been in a better position to answer some of those questions.

"Sensei, did you know Mr Oshiro is a veteran of the Battle of Okinawa?"

Mitani had to mentally shake himself out of his stare and back to the present. He knew when to take a hint. "Yeah. I remember seeing that in his file. He was in the Blood and Iron Student Corps, wasn't he? He must have been about sixteen when the war ended."

"I can't even imagine fighting a war at my age, let alone one as devastating as the Battle of Okinawa."

Mitani nodded. "They estimate that of the two thousand or so high school students from the islands who were enlisted, more than half of them lost their lives. Those are terrible odds for any soldier, let alone teenagers."

"But Mr Oshiro managed to survive. And now, fifty-six years later, even despite his best efforts, he still can't die."

"It seems Mr Oshiro has either had the worst of luck or the best, just like you said." Mitani tilted his head toward the computer screen as he said, "I've been looking into his family history to see if it might provide us any clues as to what could be keeping him alive."

"And?"

He shook his head slowly. "The war disrupted so many lives. Mr Oshiro's immediate family were all killed, he never finished high school, he married early and had a bunch of kids, and pretty much worked his whole life so that they could become educated and successful. It worked: the kids went to college, got work or got married and moved away, and as soon as they did his wife filed for divorce and he moved up north to Nago where he's been ever since." Mitani let out a deep breath as he ran his fingers through his long bangs. He hated to sum up someone's entire life as easily as that, but, "It's a pretty typical story."

"And not much help to us."

"Not really, no. But I was thinking about what Tatsumi said, about Mr Oshiro and his children not keeping in touch, and how we might be able to use that to our advantage." And so saying, Mitani pulled up another window and turned the screen to an angle at which his partner could see it.

It was a newspaper article from a small, local paper that included a photograph of an adolescent boy in glasses in front of a podium. "'High school class president Uehara Tsuyoshi speaks to community about global warming'?" Izuru read aloud off the screen as he leaned over. "So?"

Mitani smiled. "Uehara Tsuyoshi is Mr Oshiro's grandson. I was trying to think up covers for us that would get us close to our target, and I thought it would be fairly easy for me to pose as a new hire at the nursing home. At least that way I could have access to his schedule, the facility's layout, the personal experiences of the nurses who care for him, that sort of thing. Yours, however, was giving me a little more trouble, until I found this."

Izuru's expression fell. "Sensei, I hope you're not actually thinking what I think you're thinking."

"You're the same age."

"But I don't look anything like him! And science was never my best subject; you know that."

"The man has a tumor affecting the part of his brain that controls face and name recognition, not to mention he probably hasn't seen this kid in years. I can't guarantee he'd buy the act completely, but isn't it worth a shot?"

"Okay, but assuming you're right and by some miracle he does buy it, how can we be sure he's even aware of what's keeping him alive, or that he's in any condition to communicate it? How do you even steer the conversation that way to begin with? I don't think I need to tell you how it's going to look to him, having the grandson he hasn't seen in who knows how long suddenly show up asking how come Gramps isn't dead yet."

Mitani chuckled. "Alright, Izuru, what if I said you could be changing bedpans all day?"

As expected, that stopped the other's objections real quick. "Point taken," he said, clearing his throat apologetically as he poked at the dregs of his soup. "On second thought, I guess it wouldn't be too hard to play class president for a few hours."

—o—

The next morning Mitani left the hotel in Noga where they were staying for the nursing home, and a few hours later Izuru followed suit, arriving at the front desk at eleven o'clock. Aside from the non-prescription glasses he had to keep pushing back into place and the black wig Hisoka had lent him (the story behind which he would have to get someday), he had no problem assuming the air of a high school class president, having been one himself when he died. As long as no one asked him about that speech he was supposed to have given about global warming, Mitani assured him he would be fine. Convinced he still looked nothing like the Uehara Tsuyoshi he addressed himself as, he half wondered if this whole thing wasn't just his partner's excuse to get him in glasses.

Whether the female nurse at the visitors desk recognized him from the paper or not, she seemed impressed enough by his way of asking if he could visit his grandfather to call him sweet for his consideration and ask another girl to fill in for her while she showed him the way herself. He passed Mitani on the way there, and they made eye contact for only a second before returning to their respective assumed identities—just long enough to give one another a visual "so far so good."

The nurse took Izuru to a recreation room with many tables, at some of which seniors were engaged in games of go or baccarat or were hunched over various handicrafts, some struggling more obviously than others with the medical problems that had brought them here. She showed Izuru to a man sitting by himself at an empty table before the windows, looking out unblinkingly at the garden. His short-cropped hair was gray, his skin that had once had a bronze complexion (another reason Izuru doubted he could pass as his grandson) dull. Physically Oshiro Eiki seemed spry and younger than the seventy-two his file said he was, but the exhaustion in his gaze and poise had the exact opposite effect. The simple shirt and slacks he wore lacked any individuality, in fact were more like a uniform, giving him the impression of a prisoner. And in a way, wasn't he a prisoner of the home, and a prisoner to his own flesh?

As though on cue, just as he was thinking that Izuru's gaze alighted on the pink, puckered scar on the side of the old man's neck—the only visible evidence of his once-powerful desire to die. It took Izuru somewhat aback, and for a moment he was reminded of his own scars; but he recovered quickly when the nurse with him said, "Mr Oshiro, there's someone special here to see you."

Oshiro did not respond. He didn't even turn around. He just kept looking out the window.

"Granddad?" Izuru tried, leaning down. "It's Tsuyoshi, your grandson." The words felt alien in his mouth. I should try to imagine my own grandfather, he told himself, but the two men were so different that was little help.

There was still no reaction. Feeling a bit nervous under the nurse's gaze, Izuru said, "I know it's been a long time since you last saw me—Mom and I haven't been very good about coming to see you—but if I can, I thought it might be nice to talk for a little bit, catch up on the past couple of years."

When Oshiro still would not acknowledge him, the nurse whispered to Izuru, seeing his discomfort, "I know that his condition is upsetting, but between the cancer and the pain medication he's been a bit spacey." Naturally she said nothing about Oshiro's attempts on his life. "You should sit down with him and talk, even if you're the one doing all the talking. He doesn't say much these days, but I think he still likes to listen to other people's stories. In any case, he doesn't have much time left so . . ."

She trailed off, but Izuru understood her meaning and nodded. She couldn't know how right she was. "Thank you." It was only unfortunate that the real Tsuyoshi could not be there to hear that.

The nurse left and Izuru took a seat opposite Oshiro. Still the man would not acknowledge his presence, but rather focused his attention on something outside the window. "Did you read about my speech on global warming, Granddad?" Izuru tried. At least if the conversation were one-sided he could easily steer the topic where he wanted. "Well, maybe somebody read you the article."

No? Nothing?

"See, I was asked to speak about the war next month, on the twenty-third," Izuru spoke the date of the commemoration of the war's end in the islands carefully, "and I knew you were a soldier at the time, so I was wondering if I could talk to you about it." Inwardly he winced when Oshiro finally turned his dull gaze to him—he must have sounded awful forward for an estranged grandson—but the man still didn't say anything. "I know it's probably a painful subject, but you must have some stories that would be good for young people to hear."

Suddenly the man's eyes went wide and he said in an incredulous voice: "Hisa?"

Izuru looked around himself, but he didn't see anyone else Oshiro could have been addressing. "No, Granddad, it's Tsuyoshi. Your daughter's son? It's alright if you're confused: you probably remember me being shorter—"

"Don't be ridiculous, Hisa—Kazuhisa, I'd recognize you anywhere!" the man said with even more conviction. The light quickly returned to his eyes, making Izuru's own widen in panic. The chances that was the old man's pet name for his grandson were no doubt nonexistent.

Izuru decided to go with the flow. "Yeah, you got me . . ." Not knowing who this Kazuhisa was, he stopped himself just short of saying "granddad."

"'S been a long time!" Oshiro said. "But why you wearin' glasses? You ne'er wore glasses before."

Smiling at a joke he didn't understand himself, Izuru took them off. "I guess there's no fooling you. They're fake."

"I knew it! That looks better. But why glasses? You think that's gonna fool the enemy int' thinkin' you can' shoot straight?"

Izuru had no idea what the old man was talking about, but he pretended to find it amusing anyway. "Just don't tell anyone. I wouldn't want to blow my cover."

"'Course not, 'course not. . . . Lemme take a look atcha," Oshiro said, and before Izuru could object he had taken Izuru's chin in his hand and was tilting his head to get a better look at his face. As long as he didn't try to ruffle his hair, Izuru thought. "You ain't changed one bit, have ya, you ol' devil." Oshiro shook his head in disbelief, dropping his hand to Izuru's shoulder. "My god, how I missed you! 'S been ages—well, how you been?"

With no choice but to go along with it, Izuru thought up the most ambiguous answer he could. "Oh, same old, same old. You know how it is. But what about you?"

"The food here's crap, but I'm gettin' by. Could go for some ol' island home cookin' right about now, though. Speakin' a which, how's your mother? Nobuko still makin' those fritters a hers?"

"Sure is. Just for you, Eiki."

Izuru held his breath, but that seemed to be the right thing to say. Oshiro pressed his lips together and nodded to himself then, and squeezed Izuru's shoulder fondly. It might have been the boy's imagination, but the old man's eyes looked somewhat moist as well. "Your sister's such a dear young woman," he said with a sad smile. "So beautiful. . . . D'you . . . You remember that time we put that snake skin in her desk? She was so scared it was a real habu she swore she'd ne'er speak t' us again." He shook his head, chuckling.

Izuru smiled. "I remember that. Whose idea was that anyway?"

"Oh, I forget now. I just remember feelin' so bad 'cause I thought she was serious! But the silent treatment only lasted a week. I kept expectin' t' find a bug in my bento as revenge the whole time, though. But you always said she got a soft spot for me."

"She certainly does, that." Izuru tried to think back to the file, and whether there was a Nobuko in it. The way Oshiro spoke of her, he must have been fond of the young woman, but Izuru was pretty sure that was not the name of his ex-wife. Had she been another casualty of the war, perhaps one of the thousand-plus students who had died on the battlefield or by their own hands as conscripted medics?

"Oh, God . . . and that game 'gainst the Tigers? That was our last game before the Americans invaded. You remember that, Hisa?" Oshiro's eyes were shining, his whole face lit up as he said, "We lost, but it sure felt like the best game we e'er played. I still remember the score: five-four, Tigers, tied goin' int' the bottom of the ninth. But that home run Kare hit in the seventh innin'—God, I'll ne'er forget how alive I felt that day, like there weren' no war, no guns and bombs and no army, just the ball and the bat, and the pitcher was the worst enemy you had t' worry 'bout."

The old man looked as though he was going to break down in tears at any moment, but he kept it together as he told Izuru all about that game, play by play, as though the boy had been there himself, as his best friend Kazuhisa. Despite the cancer, Oshiro remembered everyone's name, even if he had to think about it for a few seconds—he remembered every strike and hit and run as though he had just played the game the day before, rather than fifty-six years ago.

When he had related all he could relate about that game, they talked about high school baseball, and Izuru couldn't help thinking how little some things had changed in more than half a century. Fighting a war at sixteen was something he could barely begin to imagine, yet he found he could relate to Oshiro—or at least the Oshiro of the past the old man seemed to think he was—like he had never expected reading over the man's file. He found himself wondering if the old man had found conflict in fighting the country who had given him the sport he loved so much, or if the teenagers in the student corps had still maintained their school loyalties and saw the war as a competition among themselves in the first weeks of the battle. Oshiro did not speak much of the war. Whenever it came up and the topic began to drift in an unpleasant direction, he quickly changed the subject to something lighter; but Izuru did not mind. Oshiro was so earnest he enjoyed listening, not to mention that, once he opened up, the old man's words seemed to be flowing from a great torrent of necessity within to get as much out in the open as possible while Izuru was there across from him. Between that and his dialect, which Izuru struggled to keep up with, it made trying to get any information out of him that might relate to his condition in the nursing home nearly impossible, but Izuru made the best effort he could short of asking the question outright.

At last Oshiro ran out of stories to share and the two fell into an uncomfortable silence. Izuru was tempted to just flat out ask what was keeping him alive then, to hell with the grandson/Kazuhisa act, but Oshiro spoke again before he could start.

"I know you gotta go soon, Hisa," he said, "but I really wish you wouldn'. There's so much I wish I could say t' you."

Izuru smiled gently. "But you've already said so much."

"Oh, but there's still so much t' catch up on." At that, the tears did start flowing, and Izuru's heart went out to the old man, who believed so honestly that Izuru was somebody else, somebody who meant something to him. "I guess what matters is that you're here, sittin' 'cross from me, and I can finally ask you t' your face t' forgive me."

Izuru found himself saying before he could even think, "Mr Oshiro, there's nothing to forgive—" but the old man wouldn't hear it.

"I ha'en' been able t' stop thinkin' 'bout it. I did some terrible things, t' you, and t' others, so please, even if I don' deserve it, I jus' gotta tell you how sorry I am. I'm beggin' your forgiveness, Hisa, from the bottom of my soul. If you can find it in yourself, please."

The dignity and clarity that the nursing home had seemed at first to have taken away from him returned as he said that, tears running down his face. His eyes searched Izuru's as though the other seniors and the nurses around them, and everything they represented, did not exist—as though they were back in some hometown down south, at a favorite spot, or beside a grave. I'm not Kazuhisa, Izuru wanted so badly to say; I don't have the right to forgive you. I don't even know if that's what the real Kazuhisa would do. But from everything Oshiro had said so far it seemed like he would, and it was what the old man needed more than anything.

Maybe, Izuru thought, it really was all he needed. Maybe it was for the chance to ask his friend for forgiveness that had managed to stay alive the past year and a half. Whether some outside force were to blame or not, it was not so unusual for people to wait to see that one last special person before they surrendered to death, even if their bodies should have given out long before.

With that in mind, he said with all the conviction he could muster, "I forgive you, Eiki."

At that, Oshiro could no longer keep it together. He shut his eyes tight and bowed his head in shame to hide his tears from Izuru, but he need not have been so self-conscious. "Thank you," he whispered, raising his head after a moment. "Thank you." It took an effort to say that much.

Though it pained his conscience to do so, Izuru took that as his cue to leave. He patted Oshiro's shoulder and excused himself, which the old man understood better than Izuru did himself. "Believe me," he said in parting, "I really am happy you came. I just wish I could go with you."

The nurse who had introduced Izuru was just coming into the room as he was heading out. "Oh," she started, "I didn't know you were still here."

Izuru glanced at the clock on the wall. He had been here a little less than two hours, but it had felt a lot shorter.

The nurse gave him a sympathetic look. "It's so nice of you to spend so much time with your grandfather, especially since it must be so difficult to see him like this."

He began to say that it wasn't really (were the nurses here so apologetic to everyone who came to visit a family member?), but he hadn't gotten more than a few words out when she saw Oshiro bent over, shoulders shaking, over Izuru's shoulder. "Oh my, Mr Oshiro! Are you alright?" she said as she hurried to the old man's side.

Hearing him reassure her he was fine at his back, Izuru headed for the door. Though it would have been nice to see Mitani again before he did, he decided it was best to leave now then to risk blowing his cover. Not that anyone would believe him if he admitted to it, but he was fairly sure a nursing home was the last place shinigami were welcome.

—o—

"Aw, leaving already, Mitani-san?" the nurses at the front desk stopped him on his way out. There weren't a whole lot of male nurses working during the day he had noticed, and there was something about his manner that had unintentionally attracted them to him. The more humble and awkward he appeared, the more eager they were to help him out.

Like now, as one of the two young women said, "If you don't have any plans, mine and Nami's shift ends in a half hour. We know this place close by a lot of the staff goes—"

"It's kind of a dive, but they've got _great_ island cuisine," Nami piped up. He was asking for it in a way, including in his backstory that he had just moved to Nago from the main islands.

"Sorry." Mitani shot them a shy smile. "Actually I do have plans to meet someone, but I'll take a raincheck."

That got the first young woman excited. "Oh, are you meeting your girlfriend?" to which Nami groaned. "Aw, all the cute ones are already taken." Mitani couldn't tell if she was serious or just flirting.

Which was probably part of the reason he had never been too successful with women. The other reason . . . was none of their business. Feeling even more uncomfortable, he said, "It's not that, it's just . . . I don't have a . . ." The aversion to lying outright and the fear of telling the truth battled within him, but inwardly he had to laugh. Izuru would hate to be thought of as his girlfriend. Meanwhile the girls were waiting, eyebrows raised, for an answer. "Okay, I guess you could say we're pretty serious," he finally managed.

"He's so modest," said the first girl.

"Still, we'll have to take you out sometime," Nami said, "our treat. You can even bring your girlfriend. Figure we might as well get to know each other better if we're going to be working together."

"We can tell you all the creepy stories about this place," the other laughed.

Nami didn't find it as humorous. She turned to her coworker with a pout. "Eiri, that's no laughing matter. What if there's really some truth to it?"

"Truth to what?" Mitani said, curiosity piqued.

Eiri sighed, unable to get rid of her grin. "Some of the nurses on the night shift swear they've heard some weird noises in the halls after lights out, is all. Like hi-fis turning themselves on in the middle of the night, or someone tossing a baseball against the wall." She rolled her eyes.

"Not only that, Miyagi-san says she's even felt something—like a presence!—brush by her, but when she turns around, there's no one there!"

"Yeah, well, Miyagi-san is a little . . ." Eiri wiggled her eyebrows and made a drinking motion.

Nami pouted again. "I believe her."

"Yeah, but you also believed _Ju-on_ was real."

While the two engaged one another in a glaring match, the wheels in Mitani's mind were spinning. "Are you saying the building is haunted?"

As though just remembering he was there, the young women forgot their differences, and even Nami looked quite uncertain as to how to answer as she tilted her head in thought. "I believe in ghosts and stuff," she said, "but if there was really any proof there was one walking around the home, I'd be out of here in a flash. It just gives me the creeps to think it might be real, is all."

"Yeah," Eiri agreed. "I think that's the point. We had a problem with some of the old folks going out in the middle of the night a while back. One of them even fell and broke a hip. But ever since the ghost story started going around," she exchanged glances with her coworker, "that hasn't been an issue. So, in a way, it's kind of a godsend."

That put an end to that topic, after which Mitani became the subject of the nurses' attentions once again. So he made the excuse that he couldn't be late for his dinner date and bid them a good evening. For a little while their "see you tomorrows" made him feel guilty because they wouldn't, but he brushed that feeling off. His job was to take life as a shinigami, not save it as a nurse—which working in the home for one day actually made him strangely thankful for. Maybe it was the perspective one gained after dying himself and being freed from physical pain and decay, or maybe he had just become inured to thinking of death as a turning point over the last three years rather than an end, but the whole atmosphere of the place depressed him. The apathy of the two nurses, though understandable to a degree, only added to that. It was the atmosphere of a place whose residents were simply waiting for death.

"So, how was your day of changing bedpans?" Izuru quipped when Mitani arrived at the pan-Asian restaurant near their hotel. His partner's familiar humor, however dry, put him at ease. Izuru had left the black wig and glasses in the room, which was more than Mitani could say for his pastel uniform.

"No bedpans," he chuckled as he picked up the menu. "Thank God. But it was rough nonetheless."

"Did you learn anything?"

"A lot. For example, that I'm glad I didn't live long enough to be put in a nursing home. But where Mr Oshiro is concerned . . ." He shook his head. "The doctors and nurses couldn't tell me anything our file doesn't say already. From what I could gather, they're even more baffled by his good health than Enma. Some are saying it's nothing short of a miracle."

"Anything to indicate demonic activity? I didn't get the impression he was being possessed, at least, but I know appearances can be deceiving."

"Some of the nurses reported catching Mr Oshiro talking to himself. His doctor remembered him saying after one of his suicide attempts, 'He won't let me go,' but he didn't think much of it at the time. He probably thought the 'he' referred to himself. It might be the sign we're looking for of some outside spirit's interference, vague though it is. Aside from that, however . . ." Mitani shrugged. "What about you? I hope you had better luck."

His partner sighed. "To tell you the truth, I'm still not really sure what happened."

"Yeah? I saw you talking with Mr Oshiro this morning for a little while. They told me he never says very much of anything to anyone anymore, that he pretty much shut out the world after his last suicide attempt failed. He certainly didn't look as though he was at any loss for words, though." A small smile tugged at the corner of Mitani's mouth. "So I take it my plan worked?"

Izuru snorted at that. "Not exactly. He didn't buy that I was his grandson."

"Well, he wasn't lambasting you for deceiving him for two hours straight."

"He thought I was an old school buddy. From what I could gather, it was someone who fought in the student corps with him."

That was unexpected, and Mitani found himself momentarily at a loss for words. "Well," he said after a moment, clearing his throat, "we were told the tumor might affect his ability to recognize faces."

"Tatsumi said it would probably cause symptoms similar to Alzheimer's, right? It must have screwed with his short-term memory and left the older memories, like from his childhood and the war, fairly undisturbed." Izuru smiled to himself, and leaned over his arms crossed on the table. "He was telling me about this one game his school's baseball team played. They lost, but he still remembered the score and who hit what runs in what inning and everything. He just talked about stuff like that the whole time—stuff he and this old friend he thought I was did together."

A distant expression came over the young man's features that made Mitani's heart skip a beat. It was one of those rare looks from high school life. "It was really fascinating," Izuru said. "I know this is going to sound really trite and unlike me, but it made me think: you know, young people really don't know how to appreciate the elderly these days. They don't know how much there is to learn from them, from everything their generation had to go through."

"You're right," Mitani said. "That doesn't sound like you."

If he was being sarcastic, Izuru ignored it. "It was almost like he knew he didn't have much time left, so all these old stories, these memories and regrets, just came spilling out, one after the other. He needed to ask this friend's forgiveness _so badly_, that must be how he confused the two of us."

If the irony of that crossed his mind like it did Mitani's, he gave no outward indication. "Forgiveness for what?"

"He didn't say, but I didn't get the feeling it was anything that related to our case. He talked a lot about his friend's sister; maybe it had something to do with her."

"Did he say anything else about what might be keeping him alive?"

"Of course not. That would be too easy, wouldn't it? But it did make me wonder if he was holding on just for that one chance to say just how sorry he was, maybe without actually being aware of it."

"And the suicide attempts were what, then?"

Izuru came up blank. "I guess I didn't think about that."

Mitani let out a deep breath and let his gaze return to the menu. "Whatever the case," he said at the same time, "I want to finish this tonight, demonic activity or not. I figured we'd head back to the room so I can change and return to the nursing home at about one. And if what you say is right and all Mr Oshiro needed was absolution, that can only make our job that much easier."

"Sounds like a plan to me."

"Right now all I want to think about is food," Mitani said as a waitress approached their table. "I'm famished."


	3. Benediction

"It smells like a morgue in here," Izuru wrinkled his nose and said under his breath as they wandered the halls of the nursing home later that night. They would appear invisible to any nurse or orderly who might happen to pass them, but that did not mean they could lower their defenses completely.

"It could be worse," Mitani said beside him.

"How could it be worse?"

"It could smell like a battlefield."

Izuru shut his mouth and followed his partner silently, reading the names on the doors as they went by. It was not long before they found Oshiro Eiki's room, which they entered after checking to make sure the hallway was clear. Once inside they rematerialized. They did not turn on the lights. Lights from the street and the night sky filtered in through the vertical blinds over the window, providing all the illumination they would need for their purposes.

Mitani looked more in his element now out of the nurse's uniform, in his usual slacks and Oxford shirt with his tie tucked in between the buttons. He rolled up his sleeves as he bent to examine Oshiro's sleeping form. Meanwhile Izuru checked out the room. The furnishings were as spartan as the old man's attire had been. There were a couple of old chairs by the window, one of which looked as though it had not been used in years; a small hi-fi beneath a wall-mounted shelving unit that contained a mix of old records, World War II books, and sports magazines; and against the wall beside the bed, a low tansu. The top of it had been set up like a small, informal shrine, with a few candles and photographs and keepsakes. Aside from what must have been a grade school picture of the grandson Tsuyoshi, they all appeared to be from the war era.

Izuru bent down for a better look at one that caught his eye. It was a group photograph of about a dozen young men his age in military garb. Their slightly over-exposed faces looked as blank as dolls', neither enthusiastic nor afraid of what was to come, though there was a somber feeling about the group overall. However, that might have been partly due to the photo's age. Some of the boys pictured might have played baseball with Oshiro, but one would have never known it looking at that photograph, the rifles in their hands were held nothing like baseball bats. Even after fifty-six years, Izuru recognized Oshiro easily among them. And standing next to him—

"Is that the old friend?" Mitani said in a low voice, coming up behind him. He pointed to the same young man who had grabbed Izuru's attention.

"M-m. Must be."

"Huh. Well, you have to admit, the resemblance is rather uncanny."

"That's just what I was thinking." Izuru did not need any more confirmation that the young man next to Oshiro in the photograph was Kazuhisa, because looking at him was very much like looking in the hotel room mirror that morning at the reflection of himself in the black wig. He picked up a portrait of a threesome half-hidden behind the group photo for a closer look. Oshiro and Kazuhisa stood in school uniform on opposite sides of a young woman around their same age. The similarities between Izuru and the boy from the past were even more recognizable then. As for the young woman, she must have been Nobuko, he decided, his doppelganger's sister.

A groan coming from Oshiro's bed startled them. Mitani stepped quickly to his bedside, while Izuru returned the photograph to its place, almost ashamed to be caught staring at the old man's memories.

"Mr Oshiro," Mitani said calmly to the man, "if you're awake and can hear me, do not be alarmed. I'm sorry to have to startle you like this, sir. It isn't our intention to cause you any distress."

As the old man tried to adjust his vision and push himself up in bed, he mumbled something that sounded like, "What're you doin' in my room?" He leaned back against the headboard with a grunt and blinked. "Who the hell are you?"

"It's Kazuhisa," Izuru said, effectively distracting Oshiro's attention from Mitani.

"Hisa?"

"I came by to see you today. Remember?" Izuru smiled helpfully, but the old man still didn't seem to have gotten his bearings yet. His disoriented gaze swam around Izuru's features, as though stuck straddling the fence between the dream world and waking reality. "You said you wished you could join me. Well, I've come back to take you away from this place, just like you wanted."

For a moment Oshiro just continued to stare at him. Then, however, without warning, he chuckled. The chuckle soon turned into a hearty laugh that the other two feared might alert the staff. "Young man," he finally said with a slow shake of his head, "you sure are confused."

Mitani looked over at him and Izuru had to admit he was.

"That's my fault, I guess. I made you think you was Hisa—well," Oshiro amended, "I made you think I thought you was Hisa. I'm sorry t' play such a mean trick on you, young man, but you were such a good sport 'bout the whole thing I couldn' help it. I wish you'd really been him, but, eh . . ."

Izuru could hardly believe what he was hearing. And here he had thought if anything he would have to apologize for deceiving the old man. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"I didn' wanna hurt your feelin's none. Here you went through all that trouble pretendin' t' be my grandson when you sure as hell ain't nothin' like him."

Izuru glared at Mitani out of the corner of his eye, but his partner missed it. "Sir, do you know who we are?"

"Sure do. You're shinigami here t' collect my soul. Sure took you fellas long enough. I been waitin' for you the past year and a half. See, I believe in that stuff they say's jus' superstition, 'cause I seen it with my own two eyes."

Mitani moved around to the other side of the bed across from Izuru. "What have you seen, Mr Oshiro?" he asked in a low, soothing tone of voice, as though his words were meant to massage the truth out of the old man.

Oshiro looked between the two like he thought it should have been obvious. "The hungry ghosts. They're real. They're here 'cause they want us livin' people t' suffer."

"Is that what they're doing to you?"

"Don' gemme wrong, young man," Oshiro said to Mitani. "I wanna go with you two, I tried doin' it myself, but _he_ wouldn' let me." His gaze was intense as he whispered, as though afraid someone close by would hear: "He won' lemme go."

Izuru looked up at Mitani. "_Who_ won't let you go?" the latter said. "Your doctor?"

But Oshiro just shook his head to himself, saying, "He's punishin' me, that's why . . ." He sounded more hopeless than ever. "That's why . . ."

"Punishing?" Izuru tried. "Are you talking about Kazuhisa?"

As soon as he said that name, Oshiro turned his head and covered his eyes with a shaky hand. Whether it had something to do with that old friend or was no more than coincidence, Izuru could not be sure, but he didn't want to wait any longer. For the old man's sake if not theirs, in his opinion they did not have the luxury of time. "We should take his soul now," he said.

Mitani started out of his stare at that. "But we don't yet know what's doing this to him. He could be possessed—"

"I don't care. We can worry about that possibility after."

Izuru glanced up at his partner to see his look of indecision and sighed. When it came to saving lives from demonic activity Mitani had never been one to hesitate, so why should this be any different, Izuru thought. "The chief said retrieving his soul was our top priority. If we wait and he is possessed, we risk it being lost, Sensei." Just like his own had been.

Oshiro's actions were not like those of a man possessed, however, so much as of someone struggling with an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, those inner demons of the figurative kind. Izuru shook his head, and put his hand gently on the old man's shoulder. "I know you're in pain, Mr Oshiro, and if you're ready we will help you end it."

"Don't, Izuru."

Mitani's flat tone of voice made Izuru look up at him. His old professor appeared resigned as he faintly shook his head, but it was the authority in his words that gave the boy pause. "I'll do it. We only have one shot to get this right."

Izuru bristled. So Mitani doubted his ability to do this right? Logically it was safer for Mitani with his concentration to perform the soul extraction, but to Izuru it seemed merely to remind him of the bitter fact that his partner had progressed as a shinigami far beyond him in the last three years.

He swallowed his pride, however, and turned to Oshiro, taking his closest hand in both of his. On his own side of the bed, Mitani asked the old man, "Is there anything you'd like to put in order before we do this?"

Oshiro lowered his eyes and smiled to himself. "No. I said all I could. Is this gonna hurt?"

"You won't feel a thing. I hear it's like falling asleep."

"How nice. . . . In that case, I'm ready t' go."

"Okay." Mitani said no more in response to that. Perhaps the old man's casualness on the brink of death bothered him, Izuru thought—as sometimes Mitani was bothered by his frankness on the subject, even if he didn't say so out loud.

"But I told you, it won' do no good anyway. He won' lemme go."

"We'll see about that, sir."

As Oshiro inhaled deeply and closed his eyes, Mitani took his wrist and turned his hand palm up, chanting the ancient, proscribed words in a voice barely above a whisper, his own eyes closed in concentration. Those words were among the first things Izuru had learned as a shinigami—holdovers from a pagan religion that was just as much a part of their existence as their Catholic faith—but he was not paying attention to them this time. The whole time he waited with apprehension, sure that at any moment whoever or whatever it was Oshiro believed was keeping him in this world would either object to Mitani's efforts or worse—see the departing of the old man's soul from his body as its opportunity to take over, and take them by surprise.

Nothing like that happened. Mitani only had to go through the words once before Oshiro's hand went limp in Izuru's. He had been expecting a problem so surely that he hardly noticed the words come to an abrupt end. The whole process had taken only a couple minutes. When he was finished, Mitani checked the old man's pulse and uttered as an addendum in modern Japanese, "God rest his soul," and crossed himself.

"Amen," Izuru murmured.

With that Oshiro expired. But the two were slow in moving away. "This feels odd. I expected we'd get a fight at any moment," Mitani confessed after several minutes of peaceful silence had gone uneventfully by. "Either from him or . . . something else."

"So did I. What do you think it means that we didn't?"

"We'll have to wait and see," Mitani said with a sigh as he stood, and Izuru knew by that he meant seeing whether there was still something left in the old man—something alien. "We're not out of the woods yet."

"That is, unless this 'he' that wouldn't let him go was all in his head."

"Maybe it was, and maybe that's the problem," Mitani said, and Izuru knew he was speaking of the tumor.

He opened his mouth to add something to that but never got a word out. The hi-fi on the other side of the room suddenly turned on, and an old song garbled by age and radio static filled the space—not loud per se, but jarring and even malignant-sounding in the quiet. Izuru jumped and spun around. He heard Mitani swear softly behind him before rushing over to turn off the radio.

"What the hell?" Izuru hissed. "Who'd program the radio to come on at this time of night?"

"It wasn't programmed," Mitani said. "The system is too old." He looked like he wanted to add something else but quickly thought better of it.

Not that he would have had time to get it all out. At that moment the records balanced on the shelf by his head tipped over, their weight starting a domino reaction that knocked smaller books and lighter magazines off the shelf and onto the Plexiglas cover of the turntable beside Mitani, cracking it. He ducked automatically. Izuru rushed toward him, and that was when he felt something slam into him and nearly bowl him over. He raised his arms to his face, but whatever it was cleaved around him and threw open the door of Oshiro's room, slamming it against the wall.

"That will surely call someone's attention," Mitani said with a wince.

"Are you alright?" Izuru asked him.

The other blinked. "Me? I'm fine, but—"

"I know. I've got this."

Then Izuru was dashing into the hallway before he could even catch his breath, looking up and down the dark corridors of the building for whatever had collided with him. It had been small and strong, that much he knew, but even so it could not have gotten very far, let alone without his getting a good look at it. Damn it all, it was too dark to see much of anything in this place.

The sound of buckets and brooms crashing to the linoleum floor made Izuru spin around. He jogged in that direction and rounded a corner . . . and stopped. The long hallway before him, lit by a single fluorescent tube kept on for the night staff, appeared empty—but _something_ was there, watching him like a cornered cat from the shadows, ready at any moment to bolt. He could feel it. What "it" was, however, Izuru hadn't the faintest clue as he couldn't even see the damn thing, but he sensed a vaguely malodorous presence was there with him nonetheless—a presence that didn't feel at all like Oshiro had. Had it been hiding in the old man's room all along, escaping their detection?

For that matter, could it really have been hiding inside Oshiro himself, like Mitani had suggested?

Now was not the time for speculation, Izuru reminded himself. If he could only see the thing, he would be in a much better position than he was now. Slowly, with his gaze flitting around for any sign of movement, he reached into his back pocket for a fuda.

His grasp slipped as he saw a shadow jump up from the fallen janitor's bucket and flash along the wall—but only for a moment. The next he had the fuda out, and that was all the prompting the presence needed to flee from him, taking the dim fluorescent light with it. Izuru ignored the darkness he was plunged into and held out the fuda. Regardless of the sleeping residents around him, he shouted, "Stop where you are! Show yourself!"

At least he tried. The last syllable didn't quite make it from his lips, and instead ended in a gasp as the fuda was torn from his two fingers by a sudden and fierce gust of wind. He staggered on his feet as it threatened to suck him down the hall, then turned when it abated. It was almost as though someone had turned an industrial fan on at the end of the hallway from which he had come, or left a window open to a typhoon, but needless to say there was nothing there. When he turned back around, likewise the mysterious presence seemed to have disappeared without a trace, but for the burnt-out fluorescent tubes, and the lonely fuda fluttering toward the ground some meters away.

Whatever the thing had been, demon or otherwise, it was gone now; but at least he felt he could say with confidence that Oshiro's corpse was safe from the same fate that had awaited his own. As for that equally inexplicable gust of wind—it was strange to even entertain the thought, but he could have almost sworn it had come from himself.

Izuru shook that thought away and returned to the room, where Mitani was waiting for him beside Oshiro's lifeless body. So far no one had been alerted to the room, but they both knew that luck would not hold for long.

Mitani's eyes went wide when he saw how shaken Izuru was. "Did you catch it?"

Izuru shook his head.

"What was it? Not something of Mr Oshiro's. His soul should be on its way to Enma by now."

"Whatever it was, it's gone now," Izuru said, and Mitani did not pursue the topic further, though he looked as though he wanted to.

Izuru did not mention what else had happened to him in the hallway.

—o—

Oshiro's soul arrived without incident for judgment not long after their visit to his room in the nursing home the night before. The automated e-mail Mitani received from the registrar told him as much, so it seemed to him and Izuru like their brief stay in Nago was concluded, and they expected their day to be taken up with filing the case report.

It came as some surprise when Chief Konoe himself stuck his head into the Summons Division and barked, "Mitani. Okazaki. In my office. Now."

The two exchanged glances and Izuru shrugged before they dutifully rose from their desk and followed orders.

"What did you want to see about us, sir?" Mitani began when they were inside, the door closed behind them.

The chief did not answer. That did not bode well. Instead he slapped a thin file on the far edge of his desk, which he expected them to pick up.

Mitani did just that, and Izuru stood close to read the contents with him. "What is this?" the former said.

"One Miyagi Uto, deceased as of two thirteen this morning," the chief said sternly, and Mitani sucked in a breath.

"What?" Izuru asked him.

Mitani put a hand to his mouth. He did not recognize the given name nor the attached photograph of a woman in her mid-fifties, but her listed occupation—a night orderly at a Nago nursing home—made his heart skip a beat in dread. Miyagi was a common name in the islands, but wasn't this the same woman the two nurses at the front desk had been talking about just the evening before?

The chief looked up and, catching his reaction, raised an eyebrow. "You know this woman, Mitani?"

His tone of voice told the two shinigami he already knew the answer. "Yes," Mitani said, lowering his hand.

He could feel Izuru's gaze on him as his former student turned to him in surprise.

"I never met Mrs Miyagi personally but I know who she was. Some of the nursing home staff mentioned her."

"You're sure you never met her?"

At the dubiousness in his words, the other two both looked up. They knew precisely what he was implying. "Chief," Izuru said, "we took every precaution going in last night. I swear to you, no one saw us there."

When his partner failed to back him up, however, the boy started. Mitani shook himself out of his stare. "How . . ." He cleared his throat. "How did she die?"

"Heart attack." Chief Konoe watched Mitani's face very carefully as he spoke. "She was scared to death. In her testimony she claimed to have seen a ghost."

"Well, it wasn't us!"

"Okazaki," Mitani started at his partner's outburst, but the other ignored him.

"You've got to believe me, Chief, this woman's death had nothing to do with us."

"And until you two can give me some proof of that," Konoe cut him off, "how am I supposed to convince the court to take your word for it? Surely even you must understand, Okazaki, how suspicious this death looks for our department. We had two—relatively fledgling—shinigami out retrieving a soul at the same location and roughly the same time as a healthy woman died decades before her due time." Izuru stiffened beside him and Mitani knew how the chief's mere suggestion of his ignorance offended his former student's pride. "I have been on the line with the registrar all morning trying to reassure them that my employees had nothing to do with this death, and frankly I'm getting sick and tired of repeating myself. Now, I want an explanation this minute, and I don't care which of you two I get it from."

Mitani dropped down in one of the seats in front of his desk at that. "This is our fault," he murmured.

"Sensei!" Izuru said, before the chief's raised hand stopped him.

Mitani glanced up at his partner as he told Konoe, "From hearsay I could gather Mrs Miyagi was perceived by her coworkers to be an impressionable person. She believed there was a ghost haunting the nursing home and she reported instances of radios turning themselves on in the middle of the night and the sound of a baseball being bounced against the walls."

Izuru's brows furrowed as he listened and Mitani just prayed the boy didn't say what he dreaded.

He turned to the chief. "Okazaki and I experienced the former ourselves when we went to retrieve Mr Oshiro's soul. It was several minutes after he expired, actually. The hi-fi in his room appeared to turn itself on. Then books were knocked down from the shelf above it."

"And you confirm this, Okazaki?" the chief asked.

Izuru swallowed whatever had been on the tip of his tongue and nodded. "Yes, sir. It felt hostile, whatever it was. After that I chased it into the hall, but I could find no trace of the culprit. I didn't even get a good look at it." He stopped himself as a connection was suddenly made in his mind, and he began to add, "I didn't pursue it after that, however—"

The first part of his statement was apparently just what the chief wanted to hear, because he sighed and looked down at his desk, and when he spoke again it was in a much calmer voice. "Mitani-sensei, what's this about a ghost in the home?"

Izuru's sideways glance seemed to be asking the same thing. This was, after all, the first he had heard of it.

"Just an urban legend among the nursing staff," Mitani said. "At least, that's what I thought when I first heard of it. I thought that if there was any truth to it, and if it wasn't just an invention by some members of the staff to keep the residents in line with fear, then perhaps the strange things that were rumored to have happened were the signs of a poltergeist. In many cases, what is commonly thought of as poltergeist activity is actually the unconscious projections of a person's desires or frustrations, which led me to wonder if Mr Oshiro wasn't keeping himself alive in much the same way—that is, blaming his failed suicide attempts on an outside force, some third party, when in actuality he was unknowingly saving himself."

"Telekinetically," the chief filled in.

"Yes. It seemed to fit at the time. Mr Oshiro did not have a history of paranormal behavior, but on occasion brain tumors or other freak medical conditions have been known to cause weak telekinetic abilities to suddenly and inexplicably appear in otherwise normal people. Now, though . . ." Mitani shook his head. "After witnessing what we did last night, I'm more willing to believe this is a classic case of poltergeist activity, rather than a demon or some obscure medical condition. That . . . force that we experienced, it didn't come from Mr Oshiro at all. At least, not from his soul. He couldn't have controlled it, because there was nothing left of him in Chijou at that time to do so."

As he drew his theory to a close, Mitani was once again uncomfortably aware of Izuru's gaze on him.

The chief glanced over at the boy as well, and said to them, "I take it you two haven't shared this hypothesis before now."

"No, we haven't," Izuru said grudgingly.

Should he apologize? Mitani wondered. He hadn't thought the two young nurses' story about a ghost wandering the halls at night was anything to take seriously until there was no time to bring it up. But he couldn't be sure Izuru would see it his way, rather than feel hurt at being left out of the loop.

The chief sighed again, shaking Mitani from his guilty pondering, and ran a hand through his short hair. "Well, this should appease the voices over at the registrar somewhat. I'll tell them what you've told me, and in the meantime you two can get back to your report. But you two had better be absolutely thorough on this one, understand? I want to see every minute detail that could possibly be relevant to this case clearly outlined so that no one can come back and say this or that issue was never addressed."

"What about the ghost?" Suddenly Izuru was contrite. Mitani knew this was simply his way of apologizing for his outburst earlier, but it wouldn't do him any more good. "Should we go back and clean up our mess?"

"That task will be given to another department."

"Even though it was because of us," Mitani began, "that it was allowed to scare a woman to death—"

"That kind of guilty thinking is precisely why it should no longer be your concern," Konoe told him firmly. "For both your sakes, I suggest you keep a wide radius between yourselves and that nursing home for the time being. Do I make myself clear? It's nothing personal. I just don't want to see any more of my shinigami come under suspicion if it can be avoided."

They both agreed his message was perfectly clear and concerns valid, and were dismissed.

Despite Izuru's abrupt change in attitude before the chief, however, he was reluctant to look at Mitani when they left the office, and his brows remained stubbornly knitted, his mood dark. "I killed that woman, didn't I?" he said quietly, in that self-punishing manner that never failed to wrench at Mitani's insides, even after three years in Meifu. "I let that ghost of whatever it was go, and because of that decision she's dead."

Mitani shook his head. "I don't think that at all—"

"The chief seems to—"

"You didn't know that would happen. If anything, I'm the one to blame." He let out a deep breath, running his fingers through the hair that fell into his eyes. "If I had been more forthcoming with my suspicions, maybe Mrs Miyagi would still be alive and we wouldn't be in a situation like this, and for that I owe you an apology—"

"Damn right, you do," Izuru turned on him. "How could you just let me go in there and make a fool of myself? I thought as partners we were supposed to share everything with each other. How are we supposed to work together if we can't even communicate on a simple case?"

"I feel the same way," Mitani said with as much feeling as the other, "and I should have told you—I was wrong, _mea culpa_—but at the time I didn't think that hackneyed ghost story was relevant. All right?"

Izuru put his lips together in a tight line, as if refusing to let anything that might be accepting of his former professor's apology slip out.

That look led Mitani to grab Izuru's arm and draw him aside, saying in a low voice: "Look, I apologize. But you weren't being altogether honest with me either, were you?"

Izuru's eyes went wide in panic, though Mitani couldn't imagine why. He sounded utterly terrified when he asked, "What do you mean?"

Mitani looked him in the eye. "You were starting to relate to Mr Oshiro, just like you end up relating to any of our cases who tries to commit suicide or comes into contact with a demon—or does anything that remotely reminds you of yourself. Frankly, it kills me to see you that way, Izuru. These people are not you. You can't fix what happened to us; all you can do is try to prevent it from happening to anyone else—"

"That's what I've been trying to do!"

"And I know that. But in order to do that you can't keep treating everyone like they're the same as you." Though if he were honest, Mitani wasn't sure whether it was his partner's rash empathy with the old man that bothered him so much still, or Oshiro's casual and almost eager attitude toward his own death. He sighed and closed his eyes; and when he opened them again, he kept his gaze on the floor between their feet and said quietly, "Maybe that's why I didn't share all my theories with you. This light came into your eyes when you talked about Mr Oshiro and I knew you were thinking again how . . ."

He smiled bitterly. He couldn't bring himself to say it, how something about Izuru's attitude with the old man had been too close for Mitani's comfort. Too much like those final days at Saint Michel. "I just couldn't think of anything else at the time."

It was a poor excuse, he knew, and not one Izuru was likely to buy. At the same time, the boy couldn't very well sustain his displeasure with Mitani either.

Instead he slipped out of Mitani's grip and said indifferently, "I'm going to Chijou for an espresso. You want anything?"

Mitani resisted the urge to sigh. "The usual," he said instead. "Do you need any cash?"

The simple wave he got in response he took as a negative. Mitani told himself to think nothing more of it than that. He knew it was best for his former student to be able to blow off steam alone.

Likewise, it was for the best that he turn his attention to the problem at hand. Mrs Miyagi's death bothered him just as much as it appeared to bother Izuru, if for somewhat different reasons, and despite the chief's warning he was loath to leave the case at that, without taking the responsibility he felt it was his duty to take. After all, this ghost mess had started on the case _they_ had been assigned. . . .

An idea suddenly struck him that, though he knew it was a long shot, the more he dwelled on the harder it was to let go. If they could not do anything about the ghost problem themselves, maybe they could at least get the story straight. And where better to get it than from the source?

"Tatsumi-san, you're just who I wanted to see," Mitani caught up with the secretary as he happened to be passing through the office.

Tatsumi flashed him one of his brittle but obliging smiles. "Can I help you with something?"

"Actually, I was wondering if you could advise me on the procedure for requesting an interview with a recently processed soul."

—o—

Izuru left a Tokyo Starbucks some time later with one more drink than he had intended to buy. He had been waiting for his order and staring into space, his last conversation with Mitani running circles through his mind, when that man called his cell and asked for a caramel macchiato.

"I already paid for your usual," Izuru said into the receiver, perhaps a bit more coldly than he felt like saying. Besides, he never knew Mitani to drink anything so sweet. Nor was he in any mood to be running errands for Tsuzuki's sweet tooth.

"Just order one," Mitani had said. "I'll pay you back later." He had sounded downright excited at that time. What right did he have? Izuru asked himself when he hung up and returned to the cashier to place the order. After everything he had said to Izuru about treating other people's cases like they were his own—as though that were a valid explanation for his own behavior—where did Mitani get off acting so cheerful all of a sudden?

Even as he thought that, however, Izuru knew he was only projecting. He wouldn't be holding such a childish grudge against his partner—the man he had died for, really—if it weren't for the secret he was keeping from Mitani himself. If he could really call it a secret. He wasn't even sure why he felt so uncertain about telling Mitani what had happened to him in the nursing home hallway, with the gust of wind that had come from nowhere, and that question was what bothered him the most. All he knew with any certainty was that it had filled him with a sense of dread and shame that he could not explain, and—when he allowed himself to really think about it—that frightened him.

That matter he still had no answers for when he arrived back in Meifu, but on the matter of the caramel macchiato he did.

He found Mitani where he had told Izuru he would be, on the lawn outside the main building, in a clearing between the ever-blooming cherry trees. He was playing catch with Mr Oshiro, and Izuru was not sure which surprised him more: that Oshiro's soul, for a little while allowed a form similar to theirs, was there with his partner instead of being processed, or that Mitani was actually catching and throwing a baseball, and seemed to know what he was doing.

"I didn't know you played ball," Izuru said.

Mitani turned in mid-pitch at the sound of his voice. "Oh . . . yeah." He was short of breath. The argument earlier seemed forgotten. "I played a little on my church's youth group team. That was many years ago, of course. . . ."

"No, I meant—" Izuru stopped himself before he said he hadn't thought Mitani _could_; after all, his professor had never struck him as the athletic type. More of the nerdy, intellectual type, if he were honest. Izuru shrugged. So after a few years of spending almost every moment together, thinking they knew everything about one another, all this meant was that it turned out Mitani could still surprise him.

Izuru put the three cups in their holder down on a wrought iron table that sat beneath the tree branches, only to notice a spare mitt lying on the table top. He slipped it on, slamming his right fist into the palm to loosen it up, and called out to Oshiro, "Throw it here, Pops!"

A wicked, lopsided smile spread slowly across the old man's face, and he sent a fast one beaming toward Izuru. The solid impact of the ball against the leather and the weight of it in his hand felt strange to him, and it wasn't because he had expected less from the soul of a seventy-two year old man. It felt like ages since Izuru had experienced that simple feeling of catching a ball, something he realized only now. Strange how such little things could carry such meaning after death.

And if that were true for him, he could only begin to imagine being in the old man's shoes.

As though the same had occurred to Oshiro, he said when they agreed to stop before the drinks got cold, "Damn, but this body sure feels good. Feels like it's been ages since I thrown a ball like that, but I guess it's true what they say. You jus' pick it up like you ne'er quit, jus' as easy as walkin'. That and I feel lighter in this body than I e'er felt before—like a feather, pardon the cliche."

"That's because it isn't material," Mitani told him as he wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. "Yours is only a temporary manifestation, not like ours."

"And it ain't e'en short a breath. Not bad for an ol' geezer, eh?" Oshiro laughed. "I jus' hope I can still taste fine," he said as he reached for his drink. "One a the nurses got me hooked on these damn things. But more'n anything, it's wonderful jus' t' be finally rid a that cancer. The cancer and him. I mean, don' gimme wrong. . . ."

Instead of finishing that thought, Oshiro took a long drink from his cup; and the two shinigami, left wondering what they weren't supposed to misunderstand, casually exchanged glances.

"Speaking of which . . ." Mitani began when the old man came up for air. "You mentioned a 'him' before. Do you remember? In your room, when we came to collect you."

"Right, right. . . ."

"Your doctor also said you mentioned this 'he' who wouldn't let you die. He thought you were referring to him and his staff, but we don't think that's the case. Is it, Mr Oshiro?"

"No. No, you're right there."

"Enlighten us, then. Who is 'he' really?"

"Oh." Seeming suddenly uncomfortable, Oshiro sobered and looked away. He was silent for a long moment as he collected his thoughts, and when he spoke again it was with a measured frankness. "He's Shin. Shinkichi. My little brother."

"Your brother?" Izuru echoed.

"Tha's right."

"But . . ." He quickly thought back to the old man's case file, sure he hadn't missed this piece of information—though, admittedly, it would have been easy to overlook. "You don't have a brother."

"Well, I ha'en' for a long time," Oshiro said with a chuckle, "but he most certainly did exist. He was killed durin' the war, when he was jus' ten years old."

"I think what my partner means is that we don't have any record of a younger brother," Mitani said. "Or anyone in your family history named Shinkichi. What that probably means is that his death was never recorded."

"Well, I dunno what t' tell you two, but if Shin was still alive I'd know it. That and I wouldn' a been tormented by him for the past fifty years if that was the case. I ne'er actually saw his body m'self, but I knew it like I knew I was still alive that he wasn'. Like breathin'."

The three of them took seats around the table, and Izuru, who was at a loss for words, was glad when Mitani said for him, "Would you mind telling us what happened? I understand if it's a painful subject, but—"

"Nah." The old man waved off his apology. "If I can' talk 'bout it when I'm dead, when can I? There's no more use in runnin' from the past here."

Whether it was being deceased that gave him the clarity with which he spoke, the shinigami did not know; but when Oshiro proceeded to tell them about the war years, it was in a voice so even it was almost as though the story had been rehearsed, a script of somebody else's life: he did not trip over any part of it.

When the Americans invaded the islands, Oshiro said, and the fighting began in earnest, many islanders flocked to their family tombs, the so-called turtleback tombs, for protection. It wasn't just being near the spirits of ancestors that made the option so attractive, though that did help calm nerves when bombs were falling in the hills. These walk-in tombs were often built into the hillside, making them not only the best shelter from an air attack, but also the ideal places to hide from an invading army everyone had been convinced would eagerly slaughter any civilian it found.

That was a lie perpetrated by the Japanese army, though at the same time Oshiro couldn't very well hold a grudge against them after all these years as some of the younger generations did. All nations in wartime since the beginning of time, even before situations turned dire and they became as desperate as Japan had in the final year of the Pacific War, demonized their enemy as part of their strategy. He understood that. What he could not forget were the stories of how hundreds of young women enlisted as nurses, some of them his own classmates, believing they would be raped and tortured by American troops, had linked arms and thrown themselves en masse into the sea; stories of how mothers hiding in the turtleback tombs had smothered their own crying babies so they would not risk discovery; and how some groups of fugitives had been forced from their family tombs at gunpoint, even shot by desperate soldiers from the main islands willing to kill for a temporary shelter from the bombing.

Oshiro had never found out for sure if it was a situation like the latter that had been responsible, only that when he returned from the battlefield, having watched his own best friend die of his wounds, he had been informed by neighbors of the deaths of his mother, young brother and grandparents who had left home some months before for their family's ancestral tomb. (His father had died in China some years before.) It was a third- or fourth-hand story by the time it reached him; no one he spoke to had seen their bodies; but at the same time, the young Oshiro had felt no reason to question their information. Like he told Mitani and Izuru before, he was sure he would have felt it had they been alive. Afterwards he was taken in by some relatives of his father, and tried to move on with his life.

Such was easier said than done. Memories of the nightmarish battlefields, and of schoolmates dying around him, continued to haunt Oshiro's sleep as he started a family. But it was a haunting of a more literal kind that began to make his waking life just as difficult. When he was in his late twenties he began to suspect something strange had come over his household. Doors he was sure had been closed he returned to find open, things he had turned off left on and vice versa. The kids were young and he jokingly accused them to his wife, who pretended to have no idea what he was talking about.

So Oshiro thought, at least, until the night he was awakened by voices. At first he had thought it was the wind through the trees, but gradually he was able to discern a child's voice, speaking as if from the other side of a thick wall. (As he tried to describe this, Izuru felt a chill run down his spine despite the warm spring air beneath the cherries. The devil who had seduced him had not sounded so different from that at first either: equal parts distant and disquietingly intimate.) Oshiro ran outside but could not find the source of the sound; his own children were too old at that point to have spoken in such a voice. As the strange phenomenon continued, each time reaching his ears with more clarity than before, he eventually realized that the voice sounded just like what he remembered of his brother Shinkichi's.

"I tried t' hide it from the wife and kids," he told them, "'cause I was sure they'd think I was certifiable. Well, they seemed t' come up with that impression on their own. I know the kids think I lost it, and I lettem 'cause it's easier'n tryin' t' explain the truth. They'd ne'er understand how much Shin's bein' there tormented me, how he wouldn' lemme forget what'd happened t' him, how afraid I was that he'd try and hurt my family. Maybe if he had then I woulda had reason t' discuss the whole thing, but as it was . . . there jus' wasn' anything I could do. Soon as my wife divorced me I tried movin' away, but he followed. When they told me I had cancer and had about a year t' live, I made my peace; but Shin had other plans. Guess I hadn' suffered enough for him. . . .

"But why you two askin' me 'bout this now?" Oshiro wanted to know. "I already told King Enma everything."

"It's important that we learn the identity of whoever was helping you stay alive," Mitani said. "Last night, one of the women who worked at the same nursing home died of fright saying she had seen a ghost. After what happened to us in your room after your passing, we have reason to believe the two are related."

"What happened in my room?" Oshiro repeated. He looked between the two. "Did he attack you?"

"We think he may have tried to."

"Well, I should say so. You took me away from him—the only target he's had for his hate for the last half a century."

"Mr Oshiro," Izuru said, "there's just one thing about your story I don't understand. If your brother hated you so much, why did he want you alive so bad? Why did he stop you from killing yourself?"

The old man just looked at him like that should have been obvious. "I was all he had left in the world. If I was gone, he'd be lost. It's simple as that. Too, I think he realized the worst punishment he could inflict on me was t' keep me alive and in pain. As his big brother, I was the one who was supposed t' protect him, and I wasn' there when he needed me most. I failed him when it was most important, when his life depended on it. He wasn' about t' lemme forget that. Does that make sense t' you two?"

"Yes," Mitani said solemnly, and Izuru added nothing more. An idea suddenly struck him that, though he knew it was a long shot, the more he dwelled on the harder it was to let go.

"Then what more's there t' explain? But, now that I'm gone. . . ." Oshiro shrugged.

Their cups made hollow sounds when they set them back on the table, and the old man was starting to look a little ragged despite the healthy glow of his spiritual body. Even if the game of ball had taken nothing out of him, the same could not be said for having to relive the worst years of his life.

"You will catch him, won' you? Shin?" Oshiro said. "Despite what I said 'bout him, he is still my baby brother. He needs t' find the closure tha's been granted me."

"King Enma has a team on it," Mitani reassured him.

"Tha's good." Oshiro turned to Izuru then. "The thing is, I know maybe I shouldn', but I still blame myself for his death, keep thinkin' maybe there was some way I coulda prevented it. It was the same way with Hisa. I ha'en' exactly led a model life," he said with a painful smile, "my kids could tell you that—and I know it's no excuse, but a piece a me died out there with my family, with Hisa, that I ne'er got e'en the slightest bit of back 'til t'day. I was selfish t' put you in an awkward situation like that, young man, pretendin' t' be my old friend, but I jus' thought that if I could speak t' him again before I died, ask him t' forgive me for not bein' able t' save his life all those years ago, not doin' more t' even try, then maybe I could go with the peace I wanted. Jus' _pretendin'_ I was talkin' t' him again face t' face was . . ."

It looked as though Oshiro's emotions were about to overtake him again, like they had in the home the day before; but, almost as though the transient nature of his body in this place prevented it, he said instead with dry eye and voice steady, "Young man, I can' tell you how much that meant t' me."

Those words resonated with Izuru, as he was sure they must have for his partner as well—they who had been given that actual chance for reunion in death by the powers that be. But even the painful memory of past sins that was conjured by Oshiro's words brought a smile to Izuru's lips, however small and bitter it felt. He couldn't look at either of the other men as he said, "I understand."

"I wonder," the old man said as he leaned back in his chair and looked up at the cherry blossoms, "where'er it is I'm goin', will I see him again when I get there?"

That was a question neither of the shinigami had an answer for. For all those who had prayed throughout the centuries to be reborn on the same lotus blossom in paradise, Izuru was well aware that his and Mitani's was a rare case; and that, even though he wouldn't trade it for his old life, knowing what he did, such a fate was not the paradise it was envied to be.

—o—

"A deceased's soul that never showed up in the Kiseki. . . ." Tsuzuki said to himself, looking into space as he leaned against the edge of Izuru and Mitani's desk. "No, I wouldn't say that's so unheard of. The system can get overloaded with too many souls coming in at the same time—sort of like a web server, right?—and as a result, when large groups of people die at the same time, there's a good chance that some will fall through the cracks."

Hisoka sighed. "You have no idea how the Internet works, do you?"

"Sure, I do," Tsuzuki shot back. "It's a series of tubes, right?"

Hisoka was at a loss for words, unable to believe what had just come out of his partner's mouth.

"Relax. It was a joke," Tsuzuki told him, though that still didn't answer the question. Rather than come back with a retort, Hisoka just rolled his eyes and returned to his own business, and the other continued explaining to Izuru: "The problem gets compounded when the souls that don't get recorded also fail to show up for judgment. It happens a lot in wartime. The huge numbers of casualties, combined with the oftentimes sudden nature of their deaths, as well as the fact that many die overseas and out of Enma's jurisdiction, result in a lot of misplaced souls."

"Then, they wander around for . . . what?" Izuru said. "Decades?"

"Centuries, even. Every once in a while we'll still find the soul of someone from the Genpei War."

"You're kidding!"

"No, it's true." Tsuzuki shook his head. "And the more efficient the means of killing people, the more are left to wander about as ghosts. Our successors are going to be cleaning up the mess left from the Pacific War for a good long while. The full number of those who lost their lives in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki alone I don't think Meifu will ever be able to fully account for, not to mention the hundred-thousand plus killed in Tokyo."

Izuru swore quietly. "Makes me glad I was born _long_ after that."

"Sure." Tsuzuki shrugged. "But what could we do? We didn't have a say in the politics of the living. We just went where the destruction was because we had to, it was our job. No one else was going to take care of those people—"

"Jesus . . . I'm sorry, Tsuzuki," Izuru cut him off. "I completely forgot how long you've been here."

But Tsuzuki was already waving off his apology, the brightness of his voice totally incongruous with the subject at hand. "It's all right, no harm done. . . ."

It was easy for Mitani to forget as well as he sat listening to their conversation, his attention divided by Meifu's digital database of souls which he was currently perusing; Tsuzuki's casual way of speaking of such a nightmarish series of events in national history, as well as his well-adjusted manner in general, made it that much more difficult to fully fathom his having been there to witness them firsthand.

"So," Mitani said, eager to return to the original subject, "based on what you're saying, it's plausible that our ghost could have come from the Battle of Okinawa like Mr Oshiro said."

Tsuzuki nodded. "Entirely plausible. Isn't it estimated that a quarter of the island's population had lost their lives by the end of the fighting? Let me ask you guys this: Is it a vengeful ghost, this one you've got?"

"It seems that way."

"Well, I don't know if I'd say that," Izuru said. "He was upset when we ended the old man's life and lashed out at us, but that's only natural, isn't it?"

But Mitani had to wonder if his partner hadn't been too quick to buy into Oshiro's explanation for his brother's spirit's wrath. He glanced up from the computer screen at which he had been staring until then. "Tsuzuki, have you ever heard of a ghost killing someone?"

The other two exchanged glances. "I'm not sure," Tsuzuki said. "They're not supposed to be able to do that, just by sheer physics."

"Is this about Mrs Miyagi?" Izuru asked. "You're not still on that, are you, after what the chief said?"

That was Tsuzuki's cue to excuse himself. It had been two days since the woman in question had been frightened to death by the ghost of their last case's younger brother, deceased for over fifty-five years; but Mitani found himself unable to give it up, despite reassurances that someone else was working the new investigation. He could not help feeling as though he shared responsibility for Miyagi's death, even if it was only indirectly.

There was no point hiding his activities from Izuru. Mitani nodded toward the computer screen and the dossiers of the recently deceased it displayed as he explained: "It's someone else, for your information. I've been browsing through the files on the latest souls to come in from our sector to see if anything suspicious came up, and I found this: another veteran of the war who died yesterday at a hospital in the northern part of Nago."

"So? That sort of thing happens all the time."

"Except he went in for a routine checkup and was listed as being in very good health. According to our system, the cause of death was suicide by an air bubble in the bloodstream. That's not something one usually does in the middle of a blood lab."

"So, he was in a hurry," Izuru said with a skeptical scowl. "What makes you think our ghost was connected?"

Mitani continued to stare at the screen as he struggled to define for himself what had made this man's death stand out against all the others. The frustration on his brow mostly hidden beneath his hair, he finally admitted, "A gut feeling."

"That ghost's retrieval is not our job," Izuru reminded him.

"I know that. But there's been no headway made on the case since it began."

"Two days ago, Sensei. What do you expect? And why are you poking your nose into someone else's investigation?"

Mitani escaped having to answer as Tsuzuki returned to their desk. "Oh. I forgot what I came over here to tell you guys in the first place," he said. "You've got a new case."

A grade school class photograph greeted the two when they arrived in the briefing room, enlarged to single out a young child with an androgynous haircut and face. "This is Ikeda Yuuko," Tatsumi said in the same unattached manner in which he introduced any case, "eight years of age and originally from Fukuoka. Normally we'd assign Tsuzuki and Kurosaki to the case except that her family is currently on vacation in Okinawa and were when the problem arose. We've decided in this case that if we're going to err, it's better we err on the side of the target's safety, and so we are treating it as a local problem."

"What's wrong with her?" Mitani said.

Tatsumi adjusted his glasses, the act almost covering up his silent sigh before he elaborated. "It's a rather unpleasant sort of occurrence, I'm sorry to say. We were alerted to Miss Ikeda's situation when her name appeared in the Kiseki this morning. A routine cross-check with the Count, however, found that her candle is still burning strong with no indication of anything being amiss. In other words, Meifu expects her spirit while her physical body shows no signs of weakening. A discrepancy like that naturally raises some alarms, though there could be any number of factors at play, some of them natural—"

"But one of them _is_ possession," Izuru said.

The gravity in his voice made Mitani glance over at his former student, and even Tatsumi missed a beat at the interruption. "That certainly is a possibility, yes. Though we cannot rule out anything at this point. The address and room number of the hotel in which she's staying are enclosed," he said with a gesture toward the file, "and I suggest heading over there as soon as possible. The faster you two can ascertain what happened to make Miss Ikeda's name appear as it did, the better her chances." Chances for what, however, Tatsumi was cautious enough not to say.

—o—

Something inside Izuru sank when they arrived at the address Tatsumi had given them only to find uniformed police officers swarming the room and plainclothes detectives speaking with whom it quickly became obvious were the girl's parents. Yuuko, however, was nowhere in sight.

The two stayed close and silent, slipping into their spiritual forms to avoid detection as they gathered what information they could from the conversation that ensued between the detectives and the Ikedas.

"How many times do you want me to say it?" the girl's father was saying. His impatience with the procedure showed clearly in his wavering voice, while the girl's mother wrung her hands in her floral skirt. They looked young for the parents of an eight-year-old child, and perhaps it was being conscious of that fact that they seemed frustrated with the detectives who were only trying to help—just as determined not to be judged incompetent as parents as they were concerned for their daughter's well being. "I took Yuuko down to the lobby while my wife was here getting ready to go. We were going to take her to the aquarium. She loves the dolphins and anything to do with the ocean, so I left her alone for a moment to watch the fish in the big tank downstairs while I checked the bus schedule at the front desk. I had only turned my back for . . . what seemed like a minute, and when I looked back she was gone."

"We must have looked everywhere in this hotel a dozen times over," his wife said quietly. "My husband even checked with the places close by where we'd taken her before. But we couldn't . . . That's when we called the police." She shook her head and looked stubbornly down at her hands. "I should have come down with you two—"

"No, it's my fault," her husband insisted. "I thought Yuuko would be safe if it was just for a moment. If anything's happened to her—"

"We don't want to alarm you, Mr Ikeda," one of the detectives butted in quickly, apparently trying to disarm a frightening situation before it could develop too fully, "but abductions are much rarer than the media likes to make it sound. Is it possible your daughter could have simply wandered off, seen something that caught her eye perhaps? Does she have a history of blackout episodes?"

It was the wife who answered, with a vigorous shake of the head. "No, nothing like that. That's not like her at all. She never has been the type to wander off at all."

"That's right," her husband agreed. "I know most parents are just bragging when they say their kid always does what he's told, but Yuuko really is like that—"

He stopped when his wife suddenly put a staying hand on his arm. "But she hasn't been herself lately. Ever since yesterday at the pool, remember? She's been acting kind of funny—"

"You mean talking to herself? You know she's got an active imagination—"

"No, it wasn't that. . . ."

"Funny how?" the detective asked.

At that Izuru glanced over at Mitani, who had moved to stand beside the Ikedas' sofa, his back to the glass doors that led to the balcony. Izuru trusted he knew what he was thinking without a word needing to pass between them. A shift in personality was one of the classic signs of possession. Unfortunately, as his former professor would have reminded him, it was a sign of quite a few otherwise normal medical conditions as well, to say nothing of a child's mood swings.

The Ikedas exchanged glances, and the wife said slowly, "It's strange, I only think of something being wrong now. Maybe if we'd thought of it sooner Yuuko would still be here, but at the time . . . I don't know how to describe it except to say she wasn't acting like our daughter. She's always been like her own little space heater, wearing T-shirts in the winter, but when we came back from the pool she kept complaining about being cold. What's even stranger is that she'd start throwing local words into her sentences, and neither of us speak very much Okinawan dialect," she said, glancing at her husband for support, "let alone with Yuuko."

The detectives didn't seem to know what to say to that, so they asked for a description of what the girl had been wearing when she disappeared instead. Navy shorts and a fish print T-shirt in anticipation of the aquarium, with plastic hair clips to match. Izuru made careful mental note of that information, concentrating on forming a clear picture of the girl in his mind, and that was when Mitani nodded toward the door.

When they had slipped out of the room and out of earshot of the police, they decided to scope out the pool. Both had come to the mutual conclusion as they listened to the Ikedas' story that whatever had happened to the girl had probably happened there. Of what had happened, however, there was no clue remaining, only the usual smattering of children splashing each other in the water and sun worshipers napping or catching up on the latest news or novel.

"It's just our luck the girl's missing," Izuru hissed to himself as he paced in front of a row of empty lounge chairs that were lined up beside the pool. "If she is possessed, which the symptoms her mother was describing strongly suggest, how are we supposed to help her if we don't even know where she is?"

When he received no answer, he stopped pacing and looked back at Mitani, who was just staring up at the side of the hotel as he shielded his eyes from the sun's glare. "Hey, Sensei . . . are you even listening? We have to put our heads together on this."

"I'm listening, Izuru," he said, but did not lower his gaze. "I was just thinking . . . I saw a hospital a few blocks from here from the Ikedas' window. It can't be a very long walk from where we are."

Izuru narrowed his eyes at his former professor as the meaning of his words sunk in, and, when it had, he could only wonder why he hadn't thought of that sooner. "Let's go," he said.

Mitani turned to him then, his long bangs making his expression unreadable. "Right now?"

"Well, we're not going to make any progress standing around here. At least there we can find out if anyone matching Yuuko's description has been brought in. It's as good a starting point as any."

"You're right," Mitani agreed with a smile, and had to jog to catch up with Izuru as he strode quickly toward the doors leading back to the lobby.

The hospital was a brisk few minutes' walk away just as Mitani had predicted, and Izuru wasted no time when they arrived. He went up to the front desk of the emergency wing and flagged down the first nurse he saw. "Excuse me, miss—"

Noticing his heavy breathing, she brightened obligingly as she said, "Can I help you?"

"Can you tell me if a girl named Ikeda Yuuko was admitted in the last few hours?" Izuru said between breaths as he withdrew the photograph that had been attached to the girl's dossier from his wallet, and handed it to the nurse. "She's eight years old, would have been wearing a shirt with fish on it." When the nurse started to shake her head and push the photograph back, he tried, "Please. Can you please check? She's my sister. She went missing from our hotel this morning and I need to find her, so if you can at least—"

"All right. I'll check," she said, as she quickly leafed through a stack of files on the desk. "Ikeda, you said?"

"That's right. Yuuko."

But the way she hummed as she got nearer and nearer the bottom of the pile did not bode well. She whispered the same question to another young woman at the desk, but she shook her head in negative as well. "No, I'm sorry," the first nurse told Izuru, and she did sound as though she really meant it. "There's been no one by that name or description admitted today. Have you called the police yet?"

But Izuru's attention had already drifted elsewhere as soon as he got his answer. He turned around, looking automatically for Mitani and with him some idea of what to do next, and was surprised to find his partner talking to a doctor's assistant—who, by the way he clutched his clipboard defensively to his person, wanted nothing to do with Mitani.

"Look, I'm _not with the media_," Mitani was trying to assuage the man, however unsuccessfully. "Like I said, I knew the man in life and I was hoping you'd be able to tell me more about the circumstances of his death."

"How did you find out about it in the first place, sir, if you don't mind my asking?" Though the assistant still had the patience to ask politely, it was obviously wearing quickly.

Mitani sighed—a sign he was lying, in Izuru's experience. "His estate notified me—"

"Then if his estate notified you, his estate should be able to give you the details! I don't know what else to tell you. Unless you're with the authorities and you have a warrant, those records are confidential. If you have any more questions on the matter, you can take them up with security—"

"That won't be necessary," Izuru said quickly, and pulled Mitani away by the arm, conscious that he was still in plain view of the nurses at the front desk. It didn't really matter if they made a scene—though they could both do without the extra trouble, as he tried to make clear to Mitani as they stopped over by the waiting area. "What was that all about?" he said under his breath.

"The suicide case I was telling you about this morning. It was this hospital it happened at." When Izuru rolled his eyes, Mitani said quickly, "I know it's none of our concern anymore, but the more I think about it the more I really do believe Mr Oshiro's brother was somehow involved."

"Wait . . . Is that why you wanted to come here, Sensei? To investigate your hypothesis about a connection with the ghost?"

"I wasn't thinking of that at first, but now that we're here I can't just ignore how close this hospital is to the last place Yuuko was seen. Too close to be just a random coincidence."

"But that's what coincidences _are_," Izuru said. "We can't keep dwelling on a case that's in someone else's hands now, not when that girl's soul is depending on us finding her ASAP." He looked down at the floor, exhaling sharply as he said, "And she isn't here. So what do we do now, Sensei?"

Mitani didn't have a chance to answer. Before either one of them could form any clear idea as to what to do next, the frantic clacking of nurses' shoes as they rushed toward the automatic doors made them both turn to see what the commotion was. They watched as a gurney was unloaded from an ambulance waiting under the covered drive outside, and the doctors and nurses who had rushed to meet it relayed information and orders back and forth with the paramedics. As they wheeled the gurney inside, almost jogging alongside it on the way to an operating room, bits of conversation cleared the din and made it to the shinigami's ears: the patient's blood pressure was dropping; he had already lost a lot of blood from deep puncture wounds to the chest.

As they passed, the two shinigami were allowed a brief look at the patient on the gurney. Yet Izuru could tell at just a glance that the person's chances were not good. Under the oxygen mask and busy hands of professionals he saw the body of an elderly man whose torso was drenched in his own blood. The almost black stains on his clothes flashing between white lab coats for a moment mesmerized him in some morbid way, so that he didn't see the thing that fell out of the old man's clenched hand as the party rounded the corner past the front desk.

No one saw it except Mitani, who made a small noise beside Izuru and rushed to pick it up.

"Hey, wait," the boy started as he followed, afraid his partner was going to interfere in something again and get them both thrown out. He stopped, however, when he saw Mitani instead crouch and pick something off the floor.

He held it up between his thumb and forefinger, and Izuru felt his heart skip a beat. Coming to the hospital in search of Yuuko had not been a complete dead end after all, but he dreaded to think what this latest development meant.

He hadn't seen it before, but he recognized the small object instantly as a plastic hair clip of the kind worn by young girls, the top of it molded into the shape of a blue dolphin.


	4. Kyrie

Izuru didn't get much sleep that night. Until he finally slipped into unconsciousness at some unknown, early hour of morning, the events of that afternoon had been racing nonstop through his brain, and even then his sleep had been troubled. Hoping for the fresh perspective the clarity of day usually provided, he ran over the details of the case thus far as he soaked in the hotel room's bath.

Their target, eight-year-old Ikeda Yuuko from Fukuoka, had gone missing from her Nago hotel after acting strange—and, in Izuru's educated guess based on the parents' testimony, possessed—and only a few hours later wound up a witness or possibly worse to a brutal assault on an elderly man, who later died at the hospital of his stabbing wounds. That was as much as they could tell from the hair clip the victim had been clutching that matched the description the Ikedas had given detectives. Ghosting the police who showed up at the hospital to investigate the old man's murder led him and Mitani back to the scene of the crime—a retirement community's golf course a short drive north—but once there they found no sign of the girl, and those who had seen her could not point them in any further direction.

Wherever the girl had gone after that, the shinigami dreaded that the nature of her case meant the chances of her being directly responsible for the old man's death were better than either of them wanted to believe. If she were possessed, and as such was capable of speaking and moving around in ways that were not previously in her character, then it was certainly possible she was also capable of deadly assault.

Looking back, Izuru could still remember how his own possession had felt in the last days of his life. Now that he had the advantage of hindsight and had had the opportunity to read about his case with a clear mind, he recognized what lengths the devil who had taken over him had gone to to keep him ignorant of his own condition—even in denial about his own condition—as he headed toward what should have been an obviously inevitable end.

What he remembered was a sense that he was losing control over the direction of his own thoughts, becoming paranoid and self-destructive, his sense of priorities slowly shifting and intensifying; he began to doubt his grip on reality, on his sanity—began to lose control over his own physical nerves as pain became first tolerable and then, finally, pleasurable, until at the very end he couldn't, literally for the life of him, rationalize that what he was doing to himself was fatal.

None of that he remembered with any clarity. Other shinigami told him that their deaths were usually blocked out as a safety mechanism, the traumatic ones especially, and even more so in his case considering he had already been in some form of dissociative state when he passed. But Izuru remembered _what_ he had felt—he remembered enough to know what it was he never wanted to feel again.

He couldn't wish that on anyone, least of all an eight-year-old girl whose parents were worried sick about her.

Were my parents like that after I died? he wondered, surprised to find himself thinking that now. How long had it been since he'd thought about his parents? So long he couldn't remember. I can't even remember what they look like anymore. . . .

The hot water that surrounded him now and the steam rising around him would not let him recall their faces, however, as it mesmerized him, relaxing his weary body and mind, nurturing him like the Black Current that nourished the sea around these islands. He could see it stretched out below him like a giant serpent snaking just below the surface of the water. When he tried to follow it with his eyes, the sea rolled in impossible waves as though from the current's oscillation, radiating out from his zenith like a sheet billowing and expanding to cover the world—like a tsunami building far out to sea, rolling gently toward some distant shore.

As he focused on that solid, shifting wave, he suddenly realized it was rising to pull him in, or else he was falling toward it like Icarus tumbling to earth. It washed over him, dragging him down inside itself, and he was surrounded in an instant by dark water. He could not feel it on his skin, but instinctively he knew just the same that if he breathed in like his lungs were suddenly aching to do, he would drown.

He woke with a start and slowly sat up in the tub, unaware he had drifted off to sleep again. A perfect wave of bath water rolled over the end to splash ungracefully on the tile floor, even though Izuru could not recall making any movements sudden or violent enough to cause it.

—o—

"About time," Mitani said without turning when he heard the bathroom door slide open. "Stay in there any longer and you'll turn into a prune."

"I fell asleep," came the flat response.

That was when Mitani turned, muting the television set that was currently playing the weather forecast on the morning news. Izuru leaned against the door frame, covering a yawn with the palm of his hand before continuing to towel his hair dry. As though guessing Mitani's next question, he elaborated, "I guess I didn't sleep too well last night. Must have been thinking about the case. You know how it is."

"Yeah. I know how it is."

"By the way, Sensei, we're going out today," Izuru said casually as he rifled through his bag. "Sorry for telling you at the last minute, but I promise I'll make it up to you."

"Going out?" Mitani echoed, narrowing his eyes as he regarded his former student. He had to agree this was sudden. However, as Izuru was dressed in cargo pants and a sleeveless shirt that were decidedly more trendy than his usual attire around the office, "That would explain the outfit. Can I ask where?"

"Not sure yet. But the shinigami who's been assigned the investigation into the nursing home ghost got a hold of me this morning with some questions about the case, so I agreed to meet with her and swap information."

"Her?"

Finally a smile cracked Izuru's lips at Mitani's tone of voice, albeit against his will if its lopsidedness was any indication. "Got a problem with me making arrangements with a _girl_ behind your back?" he said.

Mitani chuckled and shook his head. "No, not at all." It was just that Izuru's promise of repaying him for said arrangement was a little out of order; the way he described it, it was fairly plain to Mitani that that _was_ Izuru's apology for their disagreement about the ghost matter the day before. He just wondered why the other shinigami had called Izuru instead of him.

There came the rapping of knuckles on the door, and Izuru stepped quickly to open it. "Are you Okazaki?" a woman's voice said, and Izuru invited her in, opening the door further.

The shinigami who was handling their ghost case turned out to be a young woman in her early twenties with the darker complexion of a native to the islands and lightened, bobbed hair. She had a warm and open face, and a trim, athletic build that was barely hidden beneath very short shorts and a printed shirt tied at the navel. Despite what he had said earlier about not having a problem, Mitani could not help a slight twinge of jealousy: she was very attractive.

"Sensei, this is Akamine Chizuru from Sengoku's department," Izuru introduced her. "Ms Akamine, my partner Mitani."

"A pleasure to meet you both in person," she said as she approached Mitani with hand outstretched. Every movement she made was professional and obliging, run through with an undercurrent of authority and confidence that made it seem as though she had been a shinigami for decades. "I know time passes differently for folks like us, but three years sounds like a long time to go without meeting someone. Though I'm one to talk: I've only been here a little over five myself. . . ."

"Ms Akamine was going to share with me what she's learned about our ghost," Izuru said, raising an eyebrow at Mitani. "You're coming, right?"

"It'd be nice to have you along, Sensei," Akamine said, and she sounded as though she really did mean it, so that Mitani didn't have the heart to correct her when she used Izuru's form of addressing him. "I'm eager to get to know both of you better."

Something about the prospect of going with them made Mitani feel awkward, however, as though he would be inconveniencing them somehow. Perhaps it was not a very logical feeling, but it was one he had never really been able to escape, even in death. Besides, "I was planning on doing some research on the two elderly men's deaths, actually—the suicide and the stabbing victim. I'm already logged into the system," he said with a gesture at the laptop in front of him. "But you two go ahead and have fun, and you can bring me up to speed later."

He was a little surprised to see Izuru staring at him with his mouth half open, and wasn't sure if he should read that look as disappointment or guilt. "You sure?" Akamine said.

Mitani flashed them both a smile. "Of course. This way we can kill two birds with one stone."

Perhaps he sounded a little too sure to be genuine, because Izuru continued to stare at him with that uncertain look. "Sensei. . . ."

"Okay," Akamine said, "if you're really sure. . . . We'll bring you back a souvenir to make up for it, right, Okazaki?"

"Mm . . . right," Izuru said, a bit reluctantly.

"I hate to steal someone's partner and run, but we should really get going." She checked her watch. "We don't want to miss the bus. They run on a pretty tight schedule. . . . It was nice to meet you, though, Sensei," she said brightly with a final wave.

"Likewise," Mitani said.

"I won't be out too long," Izuru promised, as though by way of apology, but Mitani hated to see that pleading look and gestured for him to leave.

"You heard the woman," he told his former student. "Get going or you'll miss the bus. We can talk later." Besides, Izuru deserved to enjoy himself every once in a while. He was an adolescent, and just because he had died of tragic circumstances didn't mean he had to spend every moment in guilt and misery. Tsuzuki was walking testimony to that.

Maybe it was his own inability to put life behind him that made him so reluctant to join them, Mitani thought in passing as the door closed gently behind Izuru and their footsteps faded down the hall. But if so, was that really so wrong?

—o—

"So our ghost's case got reassigned to Sengoku's department?" Izuru asked Akamine when they had boarded a public bus and found a seat together. It was only natural, he thought, that they would want to get down to business.

But Akamine hummed in disapproval and shook her head. "First things first," she told him. "We've got all day to talk shop. Right now I'd rather talk about you."

By her smile, Izuru had no reason to think she was anything but interested in finding out more about him, but another passenger's cough did remind him of the living who surrounded them, and that it might not be the best course of action to speak openly about ghosts of the war and murdered elderly on a crowded bus. "What about me?" he said as he looked around.

"Where are you from? What did you in?"

"Nagasaki, and . . . it was by my own hand. I had made a deal with a devil and that was the price I paid."

He said it in as casual and vague a way as possible, conscious of their surroundings, but some bitterness he had not been watching for must have slipped through. Akamine made a thoughtful noise. "That's grave stuff. I guess I probably shouldn't have asked so casually, but sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that not everyone is so easy-going about their own demise."

"It's not my experience that the types of deaths that create shinigami are deaths anyone would want to talk about openly."

"Oh, I don't know how things are in Konoe's jurisdiction," she came back, patient enough with him to take no offense, "but that hasn't always been my experience. I know some in this business who, you get enough drinks in them, and they'll tell their own deaths like a funny story. Time heals a lot of wounds. You see, mine was a car crash. I could have been bitter—after all, my career with the police department that had been my dream since childhood, that I had busted my ass to achieve, was cut so short because of one person's simple mistake—but I've learned to take it in stride. Every day I'm reminded that my dream has not ended, it's just changed somewhat. Instead of preventing crime, I'm preventing unjust deaths and misplaced souls. I'll be helping people for a long time to come—possibly longer than I ever could on the force when I was alive."

She turned and smiled at him. "It's a blessing if you think of it that way. We're like saints, you and I."

Saints, was it? He figured she meant like bodhisattva, stuck in existence in order to help others find enlightenment. But that word conjured images of the Christian saints for him instead—martyrs of unshakable faith to whom the living, ignorant of how they had suffered for their devotion, prayed for intervention from hardship, disease and damnation. Izuru had suffered—how he had suffered—but "saint" was a designation of which he was not yet deserving. He wondered if he ever would be.

"So you're from the islands," Izuru said, forcefully changing the direction of his thoughts.

Akamine nodded. "Yep. Born and raised in the Naha area. Which is why I'm always eager to show newcomers around the prefecture I love so much. —And which is why I still can't believe we've been working within close range of each other for three years and we've never met before now. It's not a big island, you know!"

"I know. We stayed at one place on a case where we could look out from the balcony and see both the eastern and western coastline."

"You see? That's what I mean!"

Akamine laughed at that, and Izuru joined her with a chuckle as he glanced out the window to his left. Beyond the scrub that bordered the highway and went flashing by the bus, the sea stretched out a deep indigo blue against a blue sky. Thick, white clouds like cotton hung over the horizon, but there was nothing that looked to threaten rain.

The tension seemed broken between them, because when she asked, "Do you still go back to Nagasaki?", Izuru did not feel much in the way of any reservations.

"Sometimes," he sighed. "Just for old time's sake. But it doesn't feel like home anymore. The last place besides Meifu that felt like a home was my old high school, and I don't dare return there."

"Why not?"

It was an innocently asked question, but Izuru had thought that was obvious. "Well, because . . . that's where I died."

"And you're afraid to return to the scene of your death?"

Izuru narrowed his eyes at the seat in front of him. "Yes. Isn't that only natural? Don't tell me you do it all the time."

"Of course not." Recognizing she had hit a tender spot, though, Akamine retreated a bit. "But I _was_ a policewoman. I have to admit I was curious about the details of how I died and wanted to find out everything I could about it—after I recovered from the initial shock. And yes, I was shocked and outraged and everything else a shinigami goes through at first. . . ."

She smiled gently at that, almost wistfully, like there was something she wasn't saying, so that Izuru felt pressure to ask, "What? You were shocked and everything at first. . . ." he prompted.

Akamine shrugged. "Suffice it so say, Okazaki, the hardest part of being dead is leaving the people you love behind, don't you find? At least when you're a shinigami like we are, you can always see them again, but after a while it gets to a point where you really can't put them through the pain of seeing _you_. Seeing how little you've changed, or haven't."

"Yeah," Izuru said. Even if the one person he loved had not stayed behind but followed him to Meifu, "I can agree with that."

"Ah, listen to us," Akamine said with an awkward laugh, "waxing all philosophical. People are going to think this is what dead people do all day."

And she told him instead about Sengoku's office and all the goings-on there, trading gossip of her coworkers for news of Tsuzuki and the rest of the Summons Department. Izuru felt his remaining awkwardness toward her evaporate while on the subject of those other than themselves, so that it hardly felt like the half hour it was before the bus came to what she announced excitedly was their stop.

"Where are we, anyway?"

"Churaumi Aquarium!" Akamine told him like he should have known. Her eyes and her grin went wide as a little girl's as she dragged him from his seat. "You mean you haven't been yet?"

"No. I guess Sensei and I haven't gotten around to it."

"You're kidding. Come on, you must have gone to all sorts of aquariums as a kid—I bet you begged your parents to go see the sharks until they were sick of hearing it."

Izuru couldn't keep the smile from his face at her teasing. "Actually, I was more of an octopus kid," he admitted, which Akamine said just went to prove her point.

He didn't mention that this was where his latest case had been looking forward to going when she disappeared. He figured that would come up later, when they got down to business.

He did, however, keep an eye out for Yuuko when they were inside, just in case even in her state she had acted on that desire to see the aquarium. Such was easier said than done, however, as most of the visitors seemed to be children, either there with their parents or on a field trip with their class, moving like schools of fish themselves from one exhibit to the next in their identical, brightly-colored T-shirts. The two shinigami navigated around them to gaze at the colorful coral reef exhibits and the separate tanks that held the most dangerous sharks and poisonous creatures, listening in on the spiels of the tour guides who led school groups from area to area, in Japanese and English, Chinese and German.

They stopped for lunch at the Cafe Ocean Blue on the bottom floor that looked out through the tall glass windows into the Black Current open ocean tank. The cafe was cast in a blue tint, and the noon sunlight filtering through the water threw the shadows of waves and passing whale sharks and schools of fish across the tables and the floor.

Perhaps because it would have been sacrilegious in such a surrounding (if only appropriate) to eat sushi, Akamine ordered a chicken Caesar salad, Izuru a sandwich, and they ate at a table further back from the glass.

"So, Ms Akamine—" Izuru began after they had taken the initial bites.

"You can call me Chizuru."

Izuru felt the blood rush to his cheeks and he looked down at his plate. "If you don't mind, Akamine is easier for me. Our names sound too similar to be on first-name basis, it would just feel awkward."

"All right." She smiled. "But you don't mind if I call you Izuru, do you? Seems to me it's an appropriate name for a young man sitting in an aquarium."

Unable to help the feeling that the other was flirting with him, Izuru let out a small, awkward cough. "About the case—"

"Yes, yes, about the case," Akamine acquiesced with a wink; but then she was directly to business. "I followed the ghost investigation from where you and Mitani left off, working the nursing home angle. Now, you say the ghost is the spirit of a boy related to your last case?"

"Mr Oshiro's younger brother Shinkichi, yes. He was killed during the war at ten years of age. At least," Izuru picked out a piece of shaved carrot as he collected his thoughts, "Mr Oshiro seemed to believe it was his brother Shin who was haunting him when we interviewed him after his death. We were never able to confirm that, but there was never any evidence to suggest to us that he could have been mistaken in that assumption, either."

"So what we have is a classic case of a confused, deceased's soul exhibiting poltergeist behaviors, unable to move on and clinging to the one person he knew in life."

"Did you get the impression he was vengeful?"

Akamine paused at that and pointed her fork—which had presently speared a couple pieces of romaine—at him as she said, "Not in the way you're probably thinking. Or, I guess I should say, not in the way people usually think when they think of vengeful ghosts. This is no kabuki play, no _Ju-on_. If anything, it's more noh. A person dies violently, usually in a manner that is unjust or leaves the soul with a sense of restlessness, and something clicks in that soul when it separates from its body.

"Or rather," she blinked, "I guess it's more accurate to say something _doesn't_ click. Instead of identifying itself as dead, the soul exists in a state of denial. It clings ardently to the belief that it is still living, and sometimes—no one's really sure how or why it happens—it fails to be processed correctly, which only compounds the soul's belief that it's still alive."

She took a sip of acerola juice to wet her throat, then continued: "Despite what I've said, souls in this state are vaguely aware of their situation; but they don't want to process the truth, so circumstances that create internal conflict for them set them off, make them lash out in that typical poltergeist behavior you saw. Moving inanimate objects by bursts of energy and whatnot. They can't accurately process the passage of time or their surroundings, either, and continue to exist by basically repeating the events leading up to their deaths."

"Then Shinkichi's seeking out Mr Oshiro and attaching himself to him—"

Akamine nodded. "He was seeking out a balancing factor, someone who would let him continue to live—so to speak—his lie safely."

"What you're saying is that in the ghost's mind, Mr Oshiro would have appeared as his sixteen-year-old self."

"What I'm saying is that Shinkichi's ghost is still fighting a war."

"So when we sent Mr Oshiro's soul to Meifu, as far as Shinkichi was concerned we killed his brother as well as freeing him of the one factor that was keeping him in a stable state." Izuru leaned his chin on the back of his hand. "When you put it that way, it makes perfect sense he would lash out at us and then try to run."

"And his first victim," Akamine said after she had swallowed, "Mrs Miyagi, was just an unfortunate coincidence. A really unfortunate name, too, if I may say so. . . ."

"And you were able to trace his whereabouts from the nursing home?"

"I had evidence that our soul visited a hospital in northern Nago afterwards, but when he left there the trail went cold."

"That's interesting. . . ."

"Why?" Akamine took another bite of salad as she watched him carefully.

And Izuru trained his gaze on the pattern left by their drinks' perspiration on the table in front of him, looking through it as the pieces began to fall together in his mind. "Sensei and I were just there yesterday investigating our own case, but it's also the same hospital where a suicide occurred that he thought might have been related to Shinkichi's case."

As they finished their meal, Izuru brought Akamine up to speed on that mysterious suicide Mitani had been unable to let go, as well as on their latest investigation into the Ikeda girl's strange symptoms and untimely disappearance, and the murder that had somehow been connected to her. The more he described aloud, the more connected everything felt like it was becoming; having another person to bounce his and Mitani's theories off of, who could supply the missing half of the story where the ghost was concerned, produced new possibilities and new conclusions that Izuru had never imagined pondering the cases on his own. The longer they talked, the more strongly he became convinced they were in fact investigating the same case, even if they did not yet know how.

But Akamine so far had the theory that made the most sense. When she heard Izuru's description of Yuuko's ailment, she nodded vigorously and could not wait for him to finish. "I think you're right to say your girl's possessed, absolutely! And I wonder if the one who's possessing her is Shinkichi—our ghost!"

When he was at a loss for a response, she started counting on the fingers of one hand.

"Think about it. His trail went cold at about the same time the mother said her daughter started acting weird, right? The hotel and the hospital are within walking distance of each other. And a soul in Shinkichi's state who's very much aware his survival is on the line would find someone like this girl irresistible. She's around the right age, isn't overly girly-_looking_ so he could still possibly identify with her. . . . I hate to say it, but she's perfect for his purposes."

"Jesus Christ, you're right," Izuru said, looking up at her in alarm. "Why didn't we see that before? No, I know we didn't see it before because we didn't have the evidence; it was all circumstantial; but this just makes _sense_."

Akamine nodded. "The only thing that doesn't is why he's doing what he's doing now, going after those elderly men."

"Maybe Sensei will have more information for us when we get back that will make that clearer."

"I hope so." Akamine took one last look at the remains of her salad and said, "Well, shall we get out of here?"

"Sure," Izuru said with an indifferent shrug. "I want to stop by the Dolphin Lagoon before we leave though."

Akamine checked her watch. "We might be able to catch the end of the daily lecture. Or are you thinking of the girl . . . ?"

That was exactly what Izuru was thinking of. Though so far it seemed like a hopeless cause to search for Yuuko in this place, he would not allow himself to give up on the possibility.

Akamine excused herself to use the restroom and Izuru headed toward the other exhibits to wait for her, finding himself in what was labeled on the map the Aqua Room—a section of the Black Current tank where manta rays glided over a curved glass ceiling above the visitors' heads. It was a breath-taking and even disorienting view, looking up at some of the largest fish in the world as though from the bottom of the ocean.

Sometimes this job felt like that, Izuru thought, as he put a hand to the cool glass and leaned his forehead against it. When he was living, he never realized what a sea surrounded him, populated by magnificent beings he could hardly imagine, let alone see: gods and demons, spirits of the dead, and the agents of Enma, of which he would never have been able to fathom becoming one himself.

And somewhere in that sea was one lost soul, which to find would be like trying to single out one particular bonito from that school of them that just passed by. If he had just caught Shinkichi's soul when he had the chance, he was well aware, he would not have that seemingly impossible task now.

Izuru closed his eyes. The recycled air inside the aquarium was beginning to make him feel sick, but the glass felt nice and cold on his forehead. He let that feeling clear his mind for a few precious moments before the gasps of the visitors behind him startled him.

He opened his eyes, and was surprised to find he could not even see the blue of the tank, the water before him was teaming with rays so densely that they filled his vision—weaving back and forth across one another's paths with languid flaps of their massive wingspans as though riding an invisible wave that eminated from the glass, flashing white bellies with gaping, smiling mouths at him and the other visitors as they gathered around whatever had caught their interest.

"Is it feeding time or something?" he heard someone murmur behind him, while others speculated, "It looks like they're all going after something, but I can't see what it is—"

"Look what that man is doing, Mommy! Do you think it's a magic trick?"

The child's innocent shout made Izuru's heart leap in his chest and he forgot to breathe. He did not turn around, but he knew just the same that the man the child was referring to was himself. He alone had his hand pressed to the glass, and it was that spot alone along the entire length of the window that the rays were attracted to. Could they see his hand from their side of the glass? Was that all this was, animal curiosity spurred by the intrusion of an alien object into their world?

Whatever it was, he suddenly didn't like the way they were circling. He jerked his hand back. Reluctantly it seemed, the rays broke up when that happened; but Izuru refused to believe it was anything more than a random occurrence.

He did not want to believe it was anything but random, a mere coincidence, and he would prove it.

He moved a few meters to his left and touched his fingers to the glass again, expecting nothing. Instead, the manta rays honed in on this new point of contact, some whipping around in order to join their companions, as though following a moving stream of warmth—their mouths and gills working double-time as though in a feeding frenzy, but there was nothing there for them to eat.

They almost appeared to be attempting speech.

As soon as that whimsical thought entered Izuru's mind, he stepped back from the glass in panic. Maybe it was childish to think fish could speak, but he was less convinced it was just paranoia that made him think their eyes, staring unblinkingly from beneath those horn-like fins that made him think of an ant's mandibles, were watching him as he moved to leave the Aqua Room—tracking him like the eyes of the other aquarium visitors as they swam right along beside him toward the exits. But there was no way, no reason they should be following _him_ from the other side of the glass. . . .

He and Akamine both got a start as they nearly ran into each other at the room's entrance. "Oh," she said when she had regained her breath, "enjoying the view?"

"I don't feel well," he muttered. "Do you mind . . . Can we go back outside?"

"You sure? You don't want to see the deep sea exhibit first?"

He shook his head vigorously. He could just imagine the dark tanks, grotesque fish emerging from the recesses of them to follow _him_ like a lure. . . . No, he wanted daylight and fresh air. He wanted out now.

The rest of the afternoon passed uneventfully—strolling through the park's botanical gardens, scanning the crowds around the sea mammal and turtle exhibits in vain for Yuuko.

Izuru knew he was being absent-minded on the way back as well. He didn't start or blush or laugh when a plush whale shark's nose tickled his neck halfway through the bus ride, just shivered and turned to Akamine, who dropped whatever teasing, childish thing she was going to say through the shark at his lack of reaction. "You're like a million miles away, Izuru," she said instead. "Didn't you have fun today?"

He exhaled sharply and smiled. "Of course, I did. I owe you one for taking me out like this."

"Not . . . at . . . all." She emphasized each syllable with a nod of the shark. "We shinigami deserve days off to play every once in a while. And before you say it, yes, even in the middle of an investigation. We might not have come any closer to finding your missing girl, but look at how much progress we made today just by sharing with each other."

That was true. For that reason alone Izuru felt like one weight had been lifted from his shoulders, even if another had been left in its place. He shifted comfortably in the not-too-comfy seat and said without thinking, "It would have been nice of Sensei had come with us today. I really did enjoy myself, but the aquarium is more his thing than mine."

When there was no response, he looked over to see Akamine staring at the shark on her lap, a fuzzy, blue fin in each hand. For a moment he thought he had offended her, until he recognized the melancholy smile on her lips.

"What's wrong?"

"You and Mitani are really close, aren't you?"

Izuru's first reaction was to blush. Before he could answer, she went on: "I should have seen it the way you call him Sensei, and from the fact that you two were inducted around the same time." She looked up at Izuru. "You knew each other in life, didn't you?"

It was his turn to turn his gaze then. "Yes. He was one of my professors."

"Did you die together?"

"He passed away when the chapel at our school burned down. It wasn't very long after I had died. A week after, maybe."

That was all Izuru wanted to tell her, however, so he hoped she would not press the issue. He did not want to have to share that the fire was the fault of the devil who had possessed him in the first place; or that Mitani had not even died in the fire itself, but had been murdered by that devil who was using Izuru's corpse in his fight to usurp Tsuzuki. The knowledge of those last days—what his body had done, and what Mitani had done in his absence to damn himself—was still too fresh in Izuru's mind, too painful to share with anyone, no matter how much he had come to trust Akamine in the past several hours.

"I envy you," she said instead, and Izuru was taken aback. "You two are really lucky. You have forever to spend with each other."

"It's nothing to be envious of," Izuru murmured to the back of the seat in front of him.

"Why? I thought you two got along well. In fact, I got the feeling your partner thought I was intruding on something. But if that was too presumptuous of me—"

"No, you were right." There was no use hiding it now. "We were close in life too. _Really_ close, if you get me. That was the problem."

"What," Akamine chuckled, "are you trying to say you were lovers?"

When he turned to face her with a hard expression she sobered. "Oh. That is what you're saying. Forgive me, Izuru, I shouldn't have spoken without thinking."

"You don't need to apologize," he said softer. "You didn't know. It's not something I usually tell people I've just met about us."

"I completely understand." Akamine went quiet, leaving their seat in a silence that Izuru couldn't decide whether was reverential or just awkward. No doubt she was going back over everything personal they had talked about that day, making corrections over her memory of the conversation accordingly, finding new sense in the things he did. Wasn't that what everyone did when they found out about him and Mitani?

Then again, maybe he had misjudged her.

"You know. . . ." She smiled. "I'm not as different from you as you're probably thinking I am. But that was why I said I envied you two. Yes, you might both be dead and have to face your own regrets in each other every morning, but you know what? At least you _do_ get to see each other every morning. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad the person I love is still alive and happy, but it makes me sick at the same time, because I can't be with her when we're standing on opposite sides of the Styx. You know what I mean?"

Izuru did; but, not knowing what to say, he could only nod.

Akamine laughed when she saw his expression. "You thought I was hitting on you earlier, didn't you? You're so cute, Izuru! Come on, don't tell me you don't already have lots of practice fending off women's unwanted attentions!" And she teased him thusly again with the stuffed whale shark until his cheeks were burning.

He was somewhat relieved, however, when, when he invited her out of a sense of duty to have dinner with him and Mitani, she claimed previous commitments and asked for a raincheck. Izuru had not been lying when he said he had enjoyed himself, but the outing had brought up issues long buried, and some entirely new, that he needed time alone to sort out. He wasn't sure Akamine would understand what had happened to him in the Aqua Room any better than he did himself, and in either case he did not want to share that experience with someone he had only met today.

And he absolutely dreaded telling Mitani, even though he could not even understand for himself why he felt as he did. Nevertheless, it kept him out thinking about it until after sundown, long after he and Akamine went their separate ways.

—o—

Mitani knew he had lost track of the time when he looked up at the sound of the hotel room key sliding into the lock and was surprised to see it was already dark outside. Hard to believe he had really been staring at the computer screen and the notes spread out in front of him for so long he had failed to notice it growing late, to speak nothing of remembering to eat. He must have been simply expecting Izuru to tell him when to quit. . . .

"You're back late," he said with an inviting smile when the door opened.

He received no answer; Izuru slid into the room without a word. Usually quick with an apology for this sort of thing, he said nothing about his seemingly forgotten promise not to stay out too long, nor did he say a word about dinner. He silently slipped off his sandals and threw his room key and a small stuffed animal onto the nearest table.

Maybe he was too beat from walking around all day to say anything, Mitani thought as his smile fell, and he forgot about his own work and rose from his seat. "So, how was it?" he started, noting the dark look on his partner's face. "Did you two enjoy your day off or what?"

"It was fine," came the noncommittal response.

"I don't know if you've eaten yet, but I kind of forgot to get something myself, so if you're interested—"

Mitani didn't get to finish that question. After stretching limbs tired from sitting too long, he turned for a moment to put the laptop to sleep, and did not notice that Izuru had closed the distance between them until he turned back again and felt his partner's mouth crush against his.

Caught by surprise, he backed against the table, and the hand he put out to steady himself slid against his notes on its top. Izuru had one hand on the back of his neck, threaded into the hair gathered there, holding Mitani to him as they kissed; the fingers of his other hand twisted into the belt loops of Mitani's trousers as he pressed his body against Mitani's. Mitani could feel the boy's stomach muscles fluttering with anticipation against him with each heavy breath Izuru took, and digging into his groin . . .

If nothing else spelled out Izuru's intentions to Mitani, _that_ did, and he felt himself react to it immediately. He gasped against Izuru's lips. His hands shot to Izuru's hips and he shifted his own beneath his partner, suddenly all too aware of the table's edge digging into his backside, and the friction made Izuru moan and kiss him deeper. Strange what it took to make Mitani realize just how much he had missed this, how long it had been since they had felt themselves truly, physically starving for one another's affection. Which just went to prove addictions never really go away. True, when the mood struck it was always like that saying—it never rains but it pours—but this desperate need coiled within Izuru now reminded him of when they were alive, of the illicit intensity that had brought them together night after night, in an instructor's apartment in a private Catholic school.

It was similar enough to make Mitani pull his head back. "Where did this come from?" he breathed. "Was it something Ms Akamine said? Because I don't know if I should be jealous or send you two out more often."

His poor attempt at lightening the situation with a little humor fell flat, however, and he instantly regretted having tried. "I don't want to think about the case," Izuru whispered, his breath warm against Mitani's neck, eyes dark with longing beneath his lashes.

"I didn't say anything about the case—"

"I just want to forget about it right now." That confession, uttered so desperately, took Mitani aback so that he didn't know how to answer. "Please, Sensei. . . ." Izuru swallowed. "I need to . . . I need a distraction."

"Okay." Mitani nodded as he softly stroked the boy's side, edging the sleeveless shirt he wore up with it. There was something that was weighing heavily on Izuru's mind; that much was certain just by the boy's looks, his touches. For once, though, the fact that he did not want to talk about it did not pique Mitani's curiosity. Not really.

I'll get the truth from him later, he told himself. Or rather, his body was telling his mind. Years of being in a position of authority warned him it was wrong to take advantage of the other's emotional state like this, but Izuru's fingers were running through his hair and along his scalp, his tongue exploring the inside of Mitani's mouth, the sounds he was making going straight to Mitani's groin so that he was not willing to stop himself. His hands slipped inside the loose waistband of Izuru's cargo trousers and gripped his buttocks; and Izuru, breathing hard against him, only broke away from Mitani's lips long enough to pull his shirt over his head, after which he started on the fly of Mitani's trousers while tugging his former professor back toward the hotel bed. And he had probably been back in the hotel room for all of three minutes.

—o—

The sound of his own breathing was echoed back to Mitani from the chamber of Izuru's ear as Izuru sobbed his name—or, rather, as he always did, as he cried out _Sensei_ in urgency. His arms were shaking under the weight of both of them, sweat beading on the soft skin of his shoulder underneath which his muscles trembled as they rocked together. . . . Looking back, he must have been in pain—physical or otherwise, it didn't really matter—but he would not have allowed them to stop even if Mitani had had the presence of mind to try. He had been so desperate for release then, for that carnal oneness in which he had hoped to lose himself, that nothing else mattered.

It never had mattered—not when he was alive and reckless, and certainly not when he was dead and invincible.

If anything it seemed he felt he had to hurt the flesh just to remind himself he still existed, and was that really right—was that fair to either of them? It wounded Mitani so when he was this desperate, but could he really blame Izuru when he himself lacked the will power, the self-restraint to save him from his guilt?

I'm even weaker yet, he chastised himself as he leaned his forehead in his hands, and his elbows on his desk in the dark, empty office. Even now I can't help him, not even in this one little thing. I am still a slave to the law of my flesh, and to the sins of my flesh, and nothing has changed.

And if nothing has changed, then what have I been doing here?

"Huh? Mitani-sensei, what are you doing, sitting in here in the dark at this time of night?"

It was Tsuzuki's voice that interrupted his thoughts and made him raise his head. The senior shinigami was peering down at him, the light from the hall reflecting in dark crimson eyes that were full of concern and kindness—that were wells of kindness. Like the eyes of an angel, if even angels could really be said to be forgiving. . . .

"Oh . . . Tsuzuki. . . ." Mitani's own voice sounded brittle to his ears.

"Here. Let me turn on a lamp. . . . God, do you know what time it is?"

Mitani blinked as light from the other's desk flooded his senses. "If it's so ungodly an hour, what are you of all people doing here?"

Tsuzuki smiled uneasily. "Some last minute finishing-up of a report. I told Hisoka it would be ready to turn in tomorrow—by which I mean later this morning, right?—no problem, but I might have been just a little dishonest when I implied the reason was because the work was already done. You won't tell him, will you?"

"Secret's safe with me," Mitani said with a smile of his own, but it was forced.

The other was about to settle down with his own work, but he paused when he heard that poor attempt at good humor—it was so transparent—and looked up at Mitani in alarm. His voice was softer when he asked, "Are you sure you're alright, Sensei? You look like hell. And, I know it's probably none of my business, but I thought you were staying out in Nago on a case."

"I was doing some research—"

"Yeah, right. You sure look like that's what you're doing." Tsuzuki's sarcasm cut right to the bone and Mitani looked away, stilling the hand which he had unconsciously raised to smooth his hair. "Now, what is it that's bothering you, really? You know it will only get worse if you keep it bottled up."

But Mitani thought Tsuzuki's sincere kindness might have been even harder to face than the sarcasm.

He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose, and the words just came tumbling out:

"It's Izuru. I'm worried about him. Something's bothering him and I don't know what it is or how to make him tell me—because he won't tell me, he says it's none of my business, but the thing is it _is_ my business. I'm his _partner_, and his teacher and I care about him. But I'm afraid that even if I did know what was wrong, I wouldn't be strong enough to help or . . . or to do _anything_, because all I ever end up doing is causing him pain, and . . ." Mitani shook his head. "I don't know what else to say, Tsuzuki. I don't even know if I'm making any sense."

The other considered that for a moment. "You want a drink?" he finally said in place of an answer.

"Excuse me?"

"You know what I do when my thoughts won't let me get to sleep?" Tsuzuki said as he reached into the drawer of his own desk. "I tell my troubles to an old friend. Maybe you know him, a Mr Johnnie Walker?" And so saying, he shook the bottle of whiskey he retrieved playfully.

Mitani winced around a smile. "We're already well acquainted, I'm afraid."

"That's okay. Just means we can skip the awkward introductions and get right down to the good stuff."

He grabbed his own mug from off his desk, sat down on the edge of Mitani's, and pulled Mitani's empty coffee mug toward him, filling the bottom of both with a finger or two of whiskey. When he had screwed the cap back on, he raised his mug in cheers, and Mitani reluctantly did the same. "_Kanpai_," Tsuzuki murmured as he tapped his mug against Mitani's, and took a sip.

Mitani just stared at the dark amber liquid swirling around the bottom of the cup. "You keep this in your desk?"

"Like I said." Tsuzuki rested the mug on his knee as he reiterated, "It helps when you can't get to sleep. And when this is the only place you feel like you can go to to think properly, why not have it close at hand?"

He started, however, when Mitani suddenly bowed his head and bent over the cup he held in both hands, as though from a sharp pain in the gut. And in fact it was a sharp pain after a sort, deeper than any physical blow because it wasn't physical at all. Mitani was only ashamed that he could not keep his shoulder from shaking briefly as he suppressed a whimper. He wished Tsuzuki would leave him alone with his suffering, so he wouldn't have to feel the shame of burdening him; but at the same time, he feared that if he said anything, the other might actually go.

Nevertheless, Tsuzuki's hand was there to soothe him immediately. "Sensei, what's wrong?"

Mitani forced a chuckle. "You're still calling me that after all this time?"

"Why not?" Apparently that was not the answer Tsuzuki had been expecting. "It's what Izuru calls you."

"And sometimes I wish he wouldn't. Maybe then it wouldn't hurt so much, being with him like this, here."

He contemplated the whiskey in his cup like it were a draught of poison before raising it to his lips, and he murmured around the lip: "I don't deserve that title."

For once, Tsuzuki just stared at him, watching him drink.

The whiskey burned down Mitani's throat, but he suppressed the instinct to cough, instead relishing the discomfort, embracing that burning sensation as a lenient punishment, much less than what he really deserved for his sins, which he confessed in a raspy voice, with a sense of deja vu, "I took advantage of him again."

"What?"

He could not tell if Tsuzuki meant that he had not caught that, or simply wished he hadn't.

"I know you're not a priest, Tsuzuki," Mitani said, "and that you never were, but would you mind terribly if I pretended otherwise? I know it's asking a lot of you—it's a burden that you shouldn't have to bear, listening to my problems—but there's something in your manner that's comforting to me, familiar somehow—I feel like I can trust you with anything—so please, if only for old time's sake, would you hear my confession?"

"Sensei—Mitani, I don't think I'm worth—"

"You're worthy, Tsuzuki. Believe me."

Again, a silent stare was his response. A tacit acquiescence.

And taking a deep breath, Mitani began.

"He was really affectionate, Izuru was, when he came home tonight—desperate, really—and I could tell there was something on his mind, something that triggered an alarm: You shouldn't give in to him, you shouldn't take advantage of him when he's like this, it won't do either of you any good. . . . But I did anyway. I couldn't help myself. When he kissed me, touched me, I just didn't have the strength to resist. If you had seen him, felt it in him . . . He was just _so desperate_. . . ."

Mitani shook his head at himself. "No. I'm making excuses for my own actions again. But it hurts so much, just being here with him, in this place, this manner of existence. . . . Sometimes I just can't stand it, Tsuzuki, the pain is so bad. This wasn't supposed to happen. We weren't supposed to end up here, squandering a second chance we never deserved to begin with. God knows a part of me has been grateful for this chance to be with him again—there's some hope to be taken from it, from the idea that maybe someday I can make up what I did to him, and we'll no longer blame ourselves for one another's death—but now. . . .

"I don't even know what it is, but somehow I feel like I'm losing him all over again. And maybe I've never felt like I wasn't, but this time it's different. This time it's real. And I can't even ask him _why it is_ I'm feeling this way. I only know that I can't . . . I can't do that, Tsuzuki, I can't lose him. If I lost him again . . ."

_I'd die_, he wanted to say, but somehow that didn't seem to mean much coming from the mouth of a shinigami. Which left him feeling even more hopeless. "I don't know what I would do."

He shut his eyes tight; his hands trembled around the mug of whiskey. "I can't go through that again."

Tsuzuki said nothing for a long moment, and when he did, he sounded as apologetic as Mitani had. "I don't know what you want me to say, Sensei. I'm sorry, but I'm the wrong person to ask for an answer."

"I don't even know if it's answers I'm looking for."

"I can't just tell you everything is going to be fine, either, or that you should just be open with each other and all your problems will go away. Despite the facade, I'm not that kind of person. I'd be a hypocrite if I were, and, frankly, most people here would be lying if they told you they _didn't_ feel the same way from time to time. We all have those days—or those weeks, or those decades—when we wish for oblivion, because it would be kinder than this. Much, much kinder. . . ."

Tsuzuki trailed off, and Mitani raised his eyes to catch the distant, pained expression on the other's face that spoke to a hurt much deeper than his own, much older. It reminded him of something Tsuzuki had said to him when Mitani had confessed to his role in Izuru's death, and in the old priest's and Fujisawa's murders—something whispered to oneself, never meant for anyone else to hear let alone remember unto death, about a forbidden love from once upon a time, for a person long gone though the guilt remained as fresh as the first day it took hold.

He should feel a sense of kinship with this man, Mitani knew, or at very least pity. Was that what Tsuzuki meant about not being the one to ask for a solution, because they were too similar in their complicity?

Still, he could not help adding, perhaps out of some selfish knee-jerk reaction: "At least you and Kurosaki didn't know each other in life. You don't have to look at each other every day knowing that if you had never met, that other person would still be alive."

Tsuzuki opened his mouth to say something, but quickly corrected himself with a more mysterious: "That isn't exactly true."

"But it's different, yes? You can get close to one another without experiencing the same kind of guilt—without always getting that feeling that you're just running around in circles with each other down one, big downward spiral; and that every time you just want to lose yourself in that other person for a little while, you'll only end up making things worse for the both of you."

"Well. . . ." A sheepish grin managed to break through onto Tsuzuki's lips. "Hisoka and I aren't sleeping together."

Mitani started, and then felt his cheeks grow hot. "That wasn't what I . . ." he started to say, but stopped himself. Because it had been. Or, at least that had been part of what he was thinking. If only unconsciously, something in the other pair's close relationship had reminded him strongly of himself and Izuru, to the point he must have started thinking of their situations as identical without even being aware of it.

Seeing his discomfort, Tsuzuki chuckled and said, "I knew what you meant. Just drink your whiskey. I've gotta get back to work or Hisoka's gonna kill me come morning."

Mitani looked down at his mug, where the liquor inside splashed when Tsuzuki put a heavy hand on his shoulder and gave it a heartfelt shake.

"I'm sorry I can't be of more comfort to you, Sensei, and I realize it doesn't help anything to say it never gets any easier. But love never is easy, in life or in death. And even though sometimes it doesn't feel like it, the important thing is that you are together. A lot of us here envy that about you two, that you've stuck through this together for this long, even if we never say so out loud. So be there for him, will you, whatever happens?"

"Whether he lets me or not?"

"It doesn't matter what he _lets_ you do. When you truly love someone, when you're someone's partner, you're allowed to be selfish from time to time. Especially when it matters." Tsuzuki smiled, raised his eyebrows as though to say, All right?, and got to his feet.

"Thank you, Tsuzuki," Mitani said quietly after him.

"Hm?" Tsuzuki stopped and looked over his shoulder on the way back to his desk.

"For talking with me about this."

The smile turned into an all-out grin. "Any time. That's what friends are for, right, Sensei? But if it's a priest you should ever need, I can be that for you, too."

Though right now he needed to return his attention to his work, Tsuzuki's stance at his own desk, and the return of the bottle of Johnnie Walker to its drawer said, so that Mitani felt like he had to ask, "You don't mind if I stay here a little longer while you finish your report, do you? I won't trouble you any more—"

"Got some more research to do?"

Mitani started. "Ah . . . yeah," he managed, amazed and at the same time shamed by Tsuzuki's intuitiveness. He knew Tsuzuki would disapprove, but sometimes Mitani could not help envying his bigheartedness, the way he was always there for his coworkers no matter how deep his own troubles ran. Sometimes Mitani could not help thinking that he would be a much better person if he could have half of Tsuzuki's selflessness.

He was so very grateful to Tsuzuki for that, even if he couldn't completely say their conversation had made him feel better.

Neither had the whiskey, but he took another swig anyway.

—o—

_"I love you, Sensei."_

The words just slip through his lips as he lies stretched out on the wrinkled sheets—echoing in his mind so that he can't be sure he actually just said them and wasn't imagining it, or where they even came from. It's a joke; it's gotta be. He's just kidding himself, saying those words, because he never entered into this for love. It was all curiosity and boredom and rampant teenage hormones just looking for release in a world of men, clinging onto the most appealing target or just the easiest, and Fujisawa somehow got it in his mind that this is some kind of game and there's no way Izuru is going to let him win this one either. . . .

"You should probably get back," Mitani says like he hadn't heard those words (and maybe he really hadn't). "It's almost curfew."

He's already up and buttoning the shirt he wore to class that day, redoing his ponytail and he won't look at Izuru; his fingers are shaking like they're going to break the rubber band. Shaking like Izuru sees them shaking in mass, clutched in a prayer for forgiveness that goes way beyond the one Father Robert leads them in, that rises from a fear deep within his soul that what they are doing is worse than murder, because it is a betrayal of God, of his covenant and his love—his almighty, fair-weather love—and a weakness that Mitani loathes himself for succumbing to.

What am I to you? Izuru wants to ask, wants to twist the question down inside Mitani until he can't take it anymore and has to answer with the truth. A scientific experiment? some text you study to satisfy your curiosity? But wouldn't he just be a hypocrite for saying those things? After all, it wasn't his idea to fall in love, if that's what's really happening. Why should he expect the same from Mitani?

Why shouldn't you? a voice inside him says. And he feels a righteous anger welling up inside him that he at once wishes he could repress and knows somehow is justified, even if he can't actually justify it. You can make_ him love you, it says. That's what you want, isn't it? For him to love you more than life itself?_

Is it?

"Izuru," Mitani says when he still hasn't moved—sitting on his hands and knees on the bed, leaning over Izuru. "Are you listening to me? You should get dressed and get back to your room before it's too late."

"I want to stay here tonight."

Mitani starts, and Izuru can't be sure by that look, that slight part of his lips, if it's the same fear of being caught that never seems to go away resurfacing, or if his teacher is trying desperately to quash the urge to kiss him and start this whole evening over again, or if he has frozen in terror of something he just glimpsed below the surface, something Izuru wants to keep secret even though he doesn't know what it is. Something that hums in Izuru's ears in the silence that stretches between the two of them; that makes him want to grab Mitani by the collar and never let them be parted, ever; that makes Izuru think, in some queer, disconnected way, this isn't like me at all.

It makes him think, I'll die if he makes me leave. I'll make sure he regrets it.

—o—

Izuru blinked, and he was back in Meifu, dead, and staring at the clean hands reminder that hung on the wall of the infirmary room adjacent to Watari's office. The cot he sat on the edge of smelled more like medicine than Mitani; and as he sat there, he noticed he was twisting the base of his ring finger, as one might do out of nervous habit if he were wearing a ring. But Izuru was not. Instead it was the faint ridge of scar tissue that had captured his idle attention, making a thin pink ring in the skin around the last two fingers of both hands. He had them around the two outermost toes of each foot, too, but he never had to look at them unless he was in the bath.

They were the one physical reminder of his transgressions that he bore with him to this place, the stigmata of his unholy crucifixion by his own hand—reminders of how he had mutilated his own body, believing somehow the sacrifice would redeem their sinful acts in Mitani's eyes, as though that could ever happen. . . .

He had been under the devil Focalor's influence at that time, he would tell himself, but that did not change the fact that he had been in control of his own limbs at the time, and had chosen that fate for himself nonetheless.

It did not change the fact that he had found it easier to die violently, blasphemously, than to live and let go.

Ashamed more of the sight of those scars than of his own nervous habit, he tucked his hands underneath his thighs and studied the Visible Man poster on the wall instead. He had just begun to wonder why such a thing would be hung in a room where people were sent when they felt ill, when the door creaked open again.

Izuru snapped to attention, at once dreading and eager for the answer when he asked Watari, simply, "Well?"

"Well, kid," the other said as he took a seat in a chair across from Izuru, "I don't know what else to tell you, but I got a copy of your file and did a little research, and based on the symptoms you've given me, it does sound like the work of the devil."

Worst fears confirmed, Izuru found he could do nothing but take a deep breath. How many times had he heard that phrase uttered before and thought nothing of it? The convenient excuse for a murderer who couldn't own up to his crimes, the reason given for war, or simply someone's dismissal of a product they didn't like. None of the people who used the phrase those ways knew what it meant for something to truly be the product of a devil's doing.

"But don't take it so hard, Okazaki," Watari tried when he saw the boy's mood darken. "This could actually be a blessing in disguise."

Izuru glared at him. "How could it possibly be a blessing?"

"Traditionally, Focalor was a master of ocean currents," Watari went on as though he had not heard. "He had powers over water currents, atmospheric currents, air pressure—the body of weather phenomena he's taken credit for is pretty astounding, not to mention the number of ships and planes he's sunk, but I don't mean to glorify any of _that_. Needless to say, humanity is safer now that Tsuzuki has destroyed him, though there is still the matter of the legions he commanded who are now without governance. . . ."

Watari shook his head and waved his hand, as though swatting at some imaginary fly. "Not that any of that water under the bridge has anything to do with you, kid. What I'm trying to say is, these symptoms you're experiencing—being able to propel the air at your command, effect the flow of water—these things are all happening because of Focalor's influence."

"So, in other words, I have his power?"

"In some form, yes. I can't be sure how strongly until the powers are fully manifested, as they seem to have remained latent in your system until only recently."

Izuru could feel the grimace pulling at the muscles of his face as he listened to Watari tell him this with fascination. "But there must be some mistake," he muttered. "Maybe I'm just making mountains out of molehills here. I mean, there must be other perfectly normal explanations for what's been happening around me."

"Sure, there _could_ be, but—"

"But I don't want this! I don't want anything to do with any part of him. I'm dead. Shouldn't that be enough? Isn't there something I can do to make it go away?"

"I'm sorry, Okazaki, but that simply isn't possible." Watari blinked. "These abilities were tightly interwoven with your soul when you died. They're a part of who you are now. It sometimes happens in a possession case such as yours, wherein a devil or a demon has made a pact for the flesh of its host. What was Focalor slowly became integrated with what was you," the scientist tried explaining with his hands, interlacing his fingers as he spoke, "and what was you, rather than being pushed out (because there was nowhere 'you' could go) by default slowly integrated with Focalor.

"It's like . . . Do you remember those things they used to sell at novelty stores? It's like a bed of pins, and you could make a mold of your face in the pins by pressing your face into them? Well, imagine you have one of those, and you stick an eraser up in the bottom so it's flush with the surface of the pins. Well, from that angle, if you ran your hand across it, say, all you'd have's just a smooth plane, right? But if you looked on top, you'd see the raised shape of the eraser where it's displaced the pins. The eraser is doing what Focalor did when he possessed your body—"

"Displacing me?"

"Well, they're not really displaced so much as pushed outward, 'cause they're still connected to the mesh or whatever is keeping in the pins. . . ." Watari trailed off and turned his gaze up in thought for a moment. "Okay, maybe that's not the best example. Suffice it to say, livin' things need to find balance with their environment. That applies on a spiritual level, too. You try to shove two souls into one body—excuse my bluntness here—it just isn't gonna _work_. The body isn't gonna hold them both without some sort of compensation."

"In Japanese?" Izuru said.

"In Japanese," Watari smiled, "your pact was terminal. When you passed, Focalor took your physical body and tried to dispose of your soul. Correct? In order to accomplish that—that is, in order to graft himself onto your shell, your material body, and onto your memories and personality—he had to sacrifice a piece of himself. That piece, rather than drifting out somewhere in the ether, it stuck to your soul; and when you were made a shinigami it was allowed to develop within your shinigami body, spreading like a virus throughout your cells." He nodded and beamed, satisfied by his powers of deduction. "The reason you never displayed his abilities until now is that it's taken this long for them to develop in your system to the point of being noticeable."

"So you're saying I'm infected." When the other cocked his head, Izuru said, "You said it's like a virus; that was your term for it."

"Mm. . . ." Watari either missed the hopelessness in Izuru's voice or it was part of his bedside manner to pretend he did. Still, there was something reassuring, despite his nod to himself, when he said, "'Like' being the keyword, here, but yes, that is essentially how possession works. I'd like to do some blood work if you don't mind, just to make sure."

"Do whatever you want." Izuru no longer cared.

Watari blinked at that. "Hey. . . . Hey, now, don't get upset over something like this. Think of it as an opportunity for growth—as your specialty! You know, like how the kid has his empathy, and Tatsumi can bring shadows to life."

"But that's different. Those things didn't happen because of deals they made with devils." Izuru looked down at his hands. "So, what happens next? If this stuff that was the devil's just keeps multiplying in my system, am I going to become him? Is what is me going to be displaced again?"

Because he dreaded what would become of him if that happened. Would he cease to exist? or worse, become a menace to Tsuzuki and Meifu—to Mitani?

"Hell no!" Watari said, and he did sound very certain of that. "These abilities will get stronger with time, but they'll become a part of who you are—they will cease to be Focalor's and become yours alone. There are some exercises you can do to help you learn to control them. The chief is the expert on those, and I do recommend speaking to him on this as soon as you're capable. He can really help you."

"Capable. . . ." Izuru repeated to himself. It seemed like a loaded word. Did he mean when the chief was free to address his problem, or when he himself was ready to speak of it? "What happens if I don't tell him? I mean, even you have to agree everything you've just told me is pretty hypothetical so far."

"You afraid you'll be reprimanded for keeping it to yourself?"

A little. It surprised Izuru, however, that Watari had guessed what he was thinking.

"I won't tell anybody what we've discussed here," the scientist told him in a gentler tone of voice. "Unless you think it would be easier if I did, I plan on keeping this confidential, just between the two of us. You might want to as well, just until we have proof this is really what's happening to you. But if it is, Okazaki, nothing will improve if you start getting it in your head you can deal with this all on your own. In the end, it will only be worse for everyone. I know it's difficult, but believe me on this."

It was difficult, more difficult than Izuru ever could have imagined. The dilemma continued to dog him after Watari had drawn his blood, when—not yet ready to return to the hotel room in Nago he shared with Mitani—he decided to take a walk beneath the cherry trees in full bloom that surrounded the administration complex. If I still have part of that devil inside me, he thought, then that means nothing has been changed by my death, by my being a shinigami. I wasn't able to escape the deal I made in death, and I never will be able to escape it. It will be with me always, carved into my soul and everything that is me.

A blessing, Watari had called it. But to Izuru, that could not be farther from the truth. That was the second time someone had urged him to think of his situation in those terms in two days; and despite understanding the good in their intentions, that anyone would expect him to take this development well frankly pissed him off.

The anger and frustration that he had learned to accept as part of his existence were welling up within him like they had when he was alive—the self-loathing and guilt that had plagued him since waking up in this place returning tenfold—and he felt that he would burst from the turmoil inside him if he could not find some release.

He clenched his hands at his sides, and everything that happened then happened too quickly for him to tell.

The petals of the cherry blossoms falling in the space before him reversed their descent, twirling up toward the branches from which they had fallen. The boughs above rustled in a strong gust of wind that came suddenly from out of the blue, and the sound built upon itself with each passing second like the crash of a wave upon the shore, followed by a veritable shower of petals, raining thick around him like fat snowflakes—blowing sideways like snowflakes in a blizzard before reluctantly falling to pile up in the grass.

For a moment Izuru could only stare in shock at what was happening around him. Then he clutched his hands together—not knowing why, just feeling for some reason like he must stop himself—and the wind died away. As in the aquarium the day before, his first thought was that there was no way he could have been responsible for something so freak; but at the same time, the timing was too good to continue to pass off as a mere coincidence.

He must have been responsible. There was no way he could continue to deny what he already knew in his heart.

An adage from scripture sprang to mind: if your right eye offends you, pluck it out; if your right hand betrays you, cut it off. He was not a stranger to that method of self-correction. But in Meifu, was that even a viable solution, or just vain suffering before the offending hand or eye grew back?

Then, was there no solution at all to be had?

What he had become, what he had done—suddenly Izuru could stand the thought of it no longer. He broke into a run for the shelter of the main building. The branches of the cherry trees were whipped into another violent frenzy by his passing, as though accusing him of what he wished to forget, condemning him for what he could not control. The wind, the petals and whole blossoms caught up in it, lashed at his face, at his clothes, plastering them to his skin, but he kept going, kept pushing himself until it felt like his legs would buckle beneath him, even though he knew it was futile to try and outrun what was inside him all along.

Still, the doors of the main building were a welcome relief, when he threw them open and, safe inside, collapsed upon the cool, granite floor. Never had the still air inside the hall that smelled of old wood varnish felt like such a sanctuary as it did now. His heart was hammering so hard and fast it felt like it would explode in his chest.

"Okazaki?"

Izuru started at the sound of his name, and looked up to see Hisoka standing before him in the hall, looking at him like Izuru had gone completely out of his mind—and, if he thought about it, that probably was how he looked. "Something wrong?" Hisoka asked.

Izuru tried not to sound short of breath when he answered, "Not particularly."

"Are you and Mitani-sensei avoiding each other or something? Because he's been up there with Tsuzuki since before I came in this morning, and if you ask me it's a little weird. They're acting like they know something I don't."

Not for the first time, Izuru found himself mentally cursing the other's empathic nature. There was not much he could hide from Hisoka, and now of all times he had something he wanted desperately to keep hidden—even if from one of the few people he felt he could trust unconditionally.

"I wouldn't know anything about it if they were," he said in response with a forced smile.

Hisoka narrowed his eyes at him, however. "Are you sure nothing's the matter with you?"

Because he was there if Izuru needed him to be, was what went unspoken but his dutifully concerned expression made clear. The temptation was almost too great.

"I just need to use the toilet," Izuru said instead, and rushed past him, all too aware of the eyes that followed him in curiosity. It was not a complete fabrication either. It felt like he was going to lose the contents of his stomach at any moment; he could already feel the muscles of his throat constricting like just before he had to vomit.

Izuru barely made it through the door before he did lose it, and what had been threatening to spill from him escaped his throat in a loud sob that echoed off the tile walls. His stomach cramped and he bent over the nearest sink, expecting to be sick, but all that came were heaves that made him double over the porcelain in pain and brought burning tears to his eyes. He waited for the heaving to bring up anything, but nothing came except more tears and more gut-wrenching sobs in an uncontrollable flow, reverberating deafeningly around him. Still he had the presence of mind to quickly turn on the faucet, lest anyone out in the hall hear him and see him like this, ask him what was the matter.

Because if that were to happen, he doubted his ability to lie to them effectively.

As he braced himself with shaking limbs against the sink, Izuru wished he really had been sick. He wished to God he were able to vomit up every last bit of that devil until there wasn't a trace remaining within him. Until he died if that was what it came to and had to start all over fresh. But that was more than he had the right to ask for.

* * *

_A/n: Izuru and Chizuru visit the Churaumi Aquarium in this chapter though it technically wasn't opened until November 2002, a full year and a half after this story is supposed to take place. But, see, it's like, I don't really care. It's too awesome not to include, but I figured I should stick that disclaimer on anyway._


	5. Profession

"There he is."

It was Tsuzuki's words that made Mitani turn toward the door, where he saw Izuru slipping into the office as though he had expected to arrive unnoticed.

"We were just talking about you," Tsuzuki said, and the boy started visibly before the other clarified: "I heard you and Chizuru hit it off yesterday. She's a kick in the pants, isn't she?"

Fortunately, only Mitani seemed to notice how Izuru faltered, and how thankful he appeared when it turned out that had been all Tsuzuki meant. "Er, yeah," he agreed sheepishly. "Whatever that means, Tsuzuki."

"You mean no one uses that phrase anymore?"

"Are you all right?" Mitani asked him under his breath so Tsuzuki wouldn't hear; but the boy, more pale than usual though he was, managed a convincing smile and said, "Yeah. Fine."

Mitani wasn't entirely buying it, but he knew enough by now to catch the plea in those seemingly casual words for him not to push the issue any further, especially while they had company.

Of course, Tsuzuki was not nearly as dense as he pretended to be for the sake of office harmony, because his words seemed to have an underlying purpose even if his tone was nothing but casual. "So, you caught a break from the case. What did you guys do?"

"More like a break _in_ the case," Izuru said, and he began to sound like his normal self again, easily exchanging banter with Tsuzuki. "We went to the aquarium, she told me what she'd learned about the nursing home ghost, and we got to thinking that maybe she and the two of us might be working the same case after all."

Mitani started when he heard that. It had been his hunch all along, but self-doubt from a lack of evidence and something in Izuru's manner of late—a coldness that had come in phases ever since they started working together as shinigami, but that had grown even more pervading in the last week—had conspired to prevent him from saying it outright. As he listened to Izuru relate to them his conversations with Akamine, and the theories that had developed between them on their outing the day before, he felt at once like an outsider looking in—Izuru's partner though he was, he had to share this story with Tsuzuki and any other eavesdroppers—although there was something of a veiled apology in Izuru's telling of it as well, for being unwilling to hear Mitani out on his hunches before while on their new case.

"Sensei," Tsuzuki interrupted before Izuru could quite finish, "tell him what we discovered this morning."

That shook Mitani out of his thoughts and back to the case at hand. It took him a moment to get his bearings.

"I was curious, so I was comparing the histories of our stabbing victim and the man who committed suicide at the same hospital, and it turns out they were both veterans of the Battle of Okinawa. But the suicide was Okinawan, and the other, Mr Saito, was originally from the main islands. He moved here when he retired."

"So there's no other connection other than them both serving in the war?"

"Not entirely. It turned out they were both part of the same organization. The Veterans for Okinawan Harmony. Their members include Ryukyuans, main island Japanese, and a few Americans. I guess even now there are wounds from the war that haven't healed, and these people are hoping maybe they can alleviate the tension that's existed between the three groups all this time by remembering the horrors _everyone_ had to go through. They mostly organize events around the commemoration of the end of the war. And—look at this—turns out our old Mr Oshiro was a member as well."

Izuru dropped into his seat, his brows knitted in concentration as he digested the information Mitani had just given him. Whatever his previous troubles had been, they seemed momentarily forgotten.

"Is it too much to say it's just a coincidence they all knew each other?"

"That's what I was hoping at first. But it's not a large organization, and all three had been part of its core membership." Mitani turned his computer screen toward Izuru, tapping it with the end of his pen to better illustrate his point. "Mr Oshiro dropped out of it a little over a year ago, about the same time he started trying to kill himself. But not before this picture was published in the local paper."

Izuru leaned forward, and Mitani knew what was going through his mind before he voiced it. "That's him . . . next to our assault victim."

"As well as the suicide, Mr Nagamine."

Izuru looked at him now, his eyes wide. "You think Shinkichi's spirit is on a vendetta against the members of that organization? If he'd been with Mr Oshiro all along, he might have been familiar with all of them. Could he be lashing out against the people he blames for his brother's death?"

Mitani sighed. "I wish I knew. It's not like there's any way you can read a ghost's mind. . . ."

"We have to check this out."

Though his thoughts were still distracted by what gaping holes still remained in their case, a smile nonetheless came unwittingly to Mitani's lips at his partner's enthusiasm. Still, he couldn't help himself: "And the girl?"

"If what Akamine said is true, we'll find Yuuko where we find Shinkichi. Do we even _have_ any other leads we can go on?"

It may not have been a _mea culpa_, but Mitani no longer cared. They were back on the same page, and of like mind where the case was concerned.

—o—

"Yes. I heard what happened to Mr Oshiro," Mrs Itosu said somberly to the gravel walk as they strolled the garden behind the community center back in Nago. "It was sad news, but . . . Well, to say we had been expecting it is not exactly accurate. He had been expecting it for some time—it was mostly the reason behind his falling out with the club—and then he tried to take his own life. . . ."

She trailed off, though, it appeared, not because it was difficult for her to discuss such a grave matter. Rather, it seemed out of respect for the deceased that she chose not to put into words what all of them already knew.

Mitani's pen paused on his notepad, as though he were debating whether to write down what he and Izuru already knew. They had chosen to pose as journalists from a Kyushu paper covering the Veterans' upcoming ceasefire commemoration, Mitani as a reporter, Izuru as a student photographer. It took a conscious effort to remember to actually take pictures with the camera slung over his shoulder, when the temptation to simply listen to the woman's testimony and ask her the questions weighing on his mind was near overwhelming.

Itosu Saako, the current chairwoman of the VOH, was a spry seventy-four years old. Short of stature, thin, and still rather fair-skinned at her age, she looked like a main-islands Japanese, even if her name implied the opposite. They did not ask how she identified herself. All that mattered to her was the organization, which was the brainchild of herself and several other veterans who had still been teenagers at the war's close. Including. . . .

"I suppose you've already heard about Mr Nagamine and Mr Saito," Mitani broached the subject tenderly, like he were probing a fresh wound.

Mrs Itosu hummed, but did not show any signs of shedding a tear over their deaths—as though the hardships she witnessed decades ago had long inoculated her against personal grief.

"It surprised me, to say the least," she said, "that Mr Nagamine would take his own life like that. We had prayed together for Mr Oshiro to find peace with his past and his illness, and though I suppose no one can say they know everything about a person, I thought I knew Mr Nagamine enough that he would never be one to consider suicide. Perhaps he was more tortured by his guilt than he let on."

She shook her head. "I'm sorry. I still can't think of them in those terms. We may have only known each other in our old age, but I always thought of them like little brothers. They were Eiki and Take to me. And as for Nao—Mr Saito . . . If you ask me, the timing of that awful attack could not be worse. To lose three of our members in just a few days. . . . I know we are getting on in our years, and that every day the world loses more of the very people who remember the horrors of the war and know best why it must never be allowed to happen again. That's lamentable enough. Yet when I think of commemorating the end of the Battle this year without them . . ."

Mrs Itosu sighed, and for the first time Izuru noticed a slight tremor in her tightly folded arms, and in her lips when she spoke to Mitani. Like little brothers, she had called the deceased, and even he could understand the disbelief and regret that came naturally with losing family—even if it was they who had lost him.

"I sincerely hope they catch the person responsible for that . . . that utterly _senseless_ act of violence. Not even for justice so much as to know . . . to know _why_ they did it. I can't even imagine why anyone would feel a need to attack a kind old man like Saito."

"Can you see any reason their deaths might have been connected?" Mitani asked her. "I mean, impossible though it might seem—"

"No," she said with an adamant shake of her head. "I mean, difficult as it already is to think that we should have to suffer two tragedies—three if you count Eiki—within a couple days of each other, and so close to the twenty-first, all because of some cosmic accident, it is a truth we have no choice but to accept. Maybe if I were a superstitious woman, I might have thought we were cursed. As it is, I'm just deeply saddened by the whole thing. It's all the more reason I can't accept this nonsense about Mr Grubel. Not now. . . ."

Izuru perked up at that name that was foreign to him, and was glad to see it was not lost on his partner either. "Grubel? You're referring to Lieutenant Stephen Grubel. The U.S. naval officer who is listed as a member of the Veterans for Okinawan Harmony."

Mrs Itosu nodded. "I know he's an American, and he's young, but having lived much of his life stationed here with his father, the Ryukyus have practically been his first home. He volunteered with our organization not just to lend a friendly American face to our group, but because he truly believes in our goal of mending the distrust and bitterness that's been building between our three camps ever since the war and occupation: the Ryukyuans, the mainland Japanese, and the American servicemen. Like he told me, the worst thing for him is being seen as an enemy by the people he grew up with, and in a time of peace no less. No," she shook her head, adding her whole hand to that a second later to drive home her point: "You can't believe for one minute there's any truth to what they're saying about him."

"Why?" Izuru said without thinking. "What's being said about him?"

Mrs Itosu turned to him with furrowed brows. "You don't know? It's been all over the news since this morning. I would have thought you reporters would keep close tabs on that, even if you are a long way from home. Especially if you're away from home."

"We've been a little preoccupied," Mitani said quickly; and, Izuru thought, that wasn't far from the truth.

Still, by the way she glanced between one and the other, they weren't sure Mrs Itosu was buying it. "Well, about that little girl, of course," she said as if they should have known perfectly well. "The one who's missing. About them saying how he abducted her from her hotel lobby from right under her parents' noses. If that's the case, I don't know why more people wouldn't have reported seeing them together sooner. If anything, I know he would be trying to do the right thing, which makes me all the more saddened by how he's been demonized by the media. . . ."

But Izuru was no longer listening. His eyes met his partner's across the old woman, and he could tell that Mitani wanted to be gone from there and on the trail of this new lead as soon as he did. Both recognized they hadn't a moment to spare where the safety of their missing girl was concerned; nor was it that they feared what this Grubel character might do to her as what she might do to herself—or rather, if Shinkichi were as involved as they now suspected, what the boy's spirit might do.

It took all of Izuru's restraint to snap the few remaining photographs needed for their cover, but he did it nonetheless, as Mitani thanked the woman gratuitously for her time and assistance.

Izuru did have to admire his old teacher's patience, if not his acting skills. Then again, perhaps Mitani's expressions of sympathy with Mrs Itosu and his professed wishes to help right things where Lt Grubel was concerned were not acts at all, though the information they wheedled out of the old woman was more than a just reward. Off the record, she told him where the two might find Grubel, and even gave them the number to his cell phone.

"But you won't get hold of him on it," she amended. "I've already tried a dozen times as soon as I saw the news this morning, and there's been no answer. That poor, sweet boy. . . . I don't know what will become of him for this, but he doesn't deserve a lick of it."

—o—

Once again, the two shinigami found themselves with the familiar feeling like they were a crucial step behind the local authorities in their own case, as they arrived at Grubel's apartment to find it swarming with police detectives and crime scene investigators. They stayed clear of the police in their intangible and invisible spiritual forms, letting the living do the investigative work for them as they shared what they knew of their suspected kidnapper's whereabouts—or rather, his lack thereof.

Izuru was grateful for it on one level; it narrowed down the places he and Mitani would have to search. But at the same time, he could see his old teacher's frustration plainly on his face as it became more and more apparent even the police had increasingly fewer ideas about where they might find Grubel and the missing girl—whose descriptions, the two shinigami soon found out, were the top story of every local news program.

Suddenly Izuru found the small apartment stifling. The spartan living conditions of an unmarried officer and the hastily tacked-up photographs of Grubel and his friends—their arms around one another's shoulders, laughing, or in uniform, caps pulled low over their faces—reminded him too much of the sundry pieces of Mr Oshiro's life that had been on display in his bedroom, even if the technology and styles had changed and the two men were from opposite sides of the world.

The rank smell of food left out on the kitchenette counter in the summer heat—no doubt with the unfulfilled notion of coming back to it soon—was certainly not helping matters. And on top of that, Izuru feared what effects this sudden wave of nausea might have on his surroundings if it meant he wasn't in complete control of himself. It would be problematic if a teenage boy suddenly appeared out of thin air in the middle of a crime scene.

He excused himself quickly, reassuring Mitani that he only needed some fresh air, and that in no ways should he prevent his partner from doing some snooping around on his own—as Izuru knew he was itching to do.

So Izuru found himself at the end of the balcony, slowly clenching and unclenching his fist as he looked out over the city, hoping that in doing so he might somehow become aware of every joint and sinew in his hand. Hoping that, perhaps if he was merely able to concentrate hard enough, if he could block out the sounds of the passing investigators and all his own misgivings about this case, he might find that stream of energy within him that belonged to the devil and grab hold of it—make a connection between it and his conscious mind. Maybe if he could do that, he thought as he closed his eyes and slowed his breathing, he might be able to control it when it manifested itself.

Maybe even bury it forever, he thought with a sudden hope that he clung to, even as he realized how unlikely such a thing was.

Because at the same time, he felt himself on a precipice of self-control. The last few times this alien, elemental power had manifested itself, he had been unable to do a single thing but run in the other direction; and all of those times he had unwittingly created those gales, he had been under stress.

For now he existed in fear that the next time that happened, it would be in front of Mitani; and just like all the previous times, he would be unable to reign himself in until it was already too late, let alone hide it from his partner. Doing that was already a struggle he felt he was gradually losing. And the longer he kept it from Mitani, he knew, the harder it would be for his old teacher to forgive him. At least if Mitani had been there to witness his outburst of energy in the nursing home, Izuru could have rightly claimed ignorance.

Now he wasn't sure how long he could keep this up. I don't even have all the answers about these powers myself, he told himself—but that did little to assuage his conscience about being dishonest.

He would rather be dishonest than have Mitani find out that the devil who had been responsible for their deaths—that had been responsible for their relationship from the beginning—continued to haunt them even now in the afterlife. Mitani would ask for a transfer or a new partner, and Izuru wasn't able to say he could blame his old teacher for wanting that. If their positions were reversed, he would ask for the same thing, if only because it would be harder to face the alternative.

But I don't want to lose him. I can't, not now, after everything we've gone through to get where we are. . . .

Concentrating on that thought, Izuru opened his eyes and flicked his wrist, turning his supine hand over to brush the air before him. He felt more than saw the effects of that minute action on his surroundings, as a small but strong gust of wind twisted out from beneath his empty hand, knocking a cable against the side of the balcony before fading into the air and palm fronds beyond.

Izuru lowered his eyes in resignation. If he were willing to accept it as such, he could have seen this exercise as some sort of improvement. That was, if he were willing to accept all the implications that came with it. . . .

"There you are."

He spun at the sound of that voice, startled, and his eyes were wide as they met Mitani's.

The other's brows furrowed to see that, and Izuru felt suddenly self-conscious about how guilty he must have appeared. Taking his hands from his pockets to lean against the railing beside Izuru, Mitani asked him, "Feeling better?"

"I was just thinking." The words sprang easily enough to his tongue. Nor was it really a lie, he told himself, though he wasn't sure why he felt the need to deny what Mitani could already read from his body language.

"M-m," Mitani hummed, and Izuru couldn't decide if it was because the other couldn't believe him. "You did look like you were deep in thought. I almost didn't want to interrupt you."

"It's hard to think properly in the middle of all that noise."

"See, that's what I was trying to pay attention to. You're starting to sound like Kurosaki, all this talk about auditory overload."

Izuru wasn't sure why, but Mitani's joking tone caused something bitter to rise momentarily from within him. And it was not even that his old teacher had said something out of line, or that Izuru disliked being compared with Hisoka, or anything that would have sounded equally rational. He didn't like this reaction, whatever it was; it didn't feel like himself. So he was quick to bury it and turn to Mitani, and change the subject. "Where do we go from here, Sensei? Where would he have taken Yuuko?"

"I don't think we're any closer to solving that than we were." Mitani sighed. "But there's one place that might be able to give us our next clue."

He flipped something over the top of his fingers that Izuru had not even seen him hiding in his hand, and the boy recognized it as a paper matchbook, the name of a restaurant or bar printed on it. "The police didn't seem to make anything of it, but I couldn't help noticing he had these all over his apartment in different places."

"A matchbook doesn't prove anything," Izuru said.

"No. But several indicates to me a repeat customer. Maybe someone at this place," Mitani said as he glanced down at the book, "saw him recently, or has some idea of where he might have gone if he was in trouble. If he needed to hide, for example."

"Or hide someone?"

That Mitani did not answer.

—o—

Rudy's had the look of an American establishment about it before the two even stepped foot inside the door: a vague, nostalgic, touristy sort of air that permeated the tiny bar like the customers' cigarette smoke. Not to mention most of the clientele were of some sort of European stock or black—though a few Japanese were scattered here and there—and largely carried themselves like military men despite their plainclothes. The television above the bar was close-captioned in Japanese, but the radio was playing Adam Ant's "Goody Two Shoes."

"It's an American joint?" Mitani asked lowly, leaning toward Izuru as they made their way to the bar.

"Should that come as a surprise? The guy we're looking for is American."

Mitani had to admit his question sounded ridiculous, but now that he was here that fact made him vaguely anxious and uncomfortably self-aware. He was somewhat taken aback at his partner's confidence in contrast when Izuru eagerly took a seat and said to the man behind the bar in English, "Excuse me. Sir?"

His voice was higher than Mitani was used to, but Izuru's pronunciation was far clearer than Mitani had ever managed himself. He still knew only a tourist's amount of English, while Izuru could rattle on in English and Okinawan dialect when they were on the job, like now. The boy soaked language up like a sponge, just like he had history. It made Mitani jealous; it also made him feel much older than he was.

The barman turned, grabbing for a glass to pour a drink for another customer while listening to Izuru. Mitani wondered if he was the Rudy on the sign outside. He must have been American or English himself, though there might have been some Russian blood in there somewhere as well; but despite the nature of the rest of his clientele, he did not appear to be the least surprised by their presence there.

Izuru wasted no time getting to business. "Has Stephen Grubel come here recently?"

"What do we look like, kid? Unless you're somehow holding a warrant to go with that question, this really isn't the kind of place that'd give out that information—especially without ordering a drink."

Izuru's cheeks colored faintly as he said the first drinks to come to mind, and Mitani had to admit he was lost. "What did he say?"

Izuru just ignored him and pushed on in English. "Don't get me wrong. I am friend of Steve. He wanted to meet here—"

"Steve _Grubel_?" said a man a few seats down the bar.

The barman still looked like he wasn't buying, but Izuru seized the chance.

He turned to the other man, a thirty-something American with a slight accent Izuru didn't recognize and a Hawaiian shirt. "You know him?"

"Not _intimately_," the other said like Izuru should get the inside joke. When the boy didn't, he amended, raising his eyebrows, "I mean, he's a regular in here, sure, or at least used to be. Don't believe that bullshit on the news, though. The locals are always out to smear the military types any way they can, think they can get us _gai-jeen_ kicked off their island faster if they pin enough nasty shit on us. Doesn't seem to matter if it's the truth or not."

Izuru was having a hard time following by his knitted eyebrows, but he nodded vaguely in any case.

Still, it was obvious to the other man as well he was having some difficulty.

"Well, you obviously didn't come in here for politics. You're _yamatonchu_, right? Well. All I'm saying, there's no way Steve would be into half the shit they're implying." He nodded to the television, although it was currently playing a baseball game taped from earlier in the day. "He didn't kidnap that missing girl, if you ask me. Aside from this place, he was too goody-goody for his own . . . well, good. Definitely not into little kids—or girls for that matter."

Remembering where he was, the man smiled toothily at Izuru, and there was something in it Mitani did not like.

Neither did Izuru, from the look of him.

"Well, you're his friend," the man said, like he knew perfectly well that wasn't true. "You knew what he _was_ into."

The past tense was lost on Izuru, because that was when Mitani leaned over again to speak into his ear, "What's he talking about?"

"The man we're looking for," Izuru said in Japanese. He spoke quietly and quickly, turned away from the man in the Hawaiian shirt, yet he could not quell the feeling that the man was paying uncomfortably close attention to everything he said. "All he said was that he doesn't think Grubel kidnapped our girl."

"But we already figured that. That doesn't change the fact they're together. What about other places he might frequent, or—"

"I'll get to that, but—"

"So, what?" Hawaiian-shirt man interrupted, his voice louder in Izuru's ear than before.

Izuru turned to find to his chagrin that the man had moved during his conversation with Mitani to the seat next to him. The boy's recoil was instinctual. "You two into swinging or something? Threesomes?" He could see the English was being lost on Izuru, so he tried, "_Menage a trois_?"

That needed no further translation for either of them. Mitani coughed into his tumbler.

When Izuru backed away in offense, the man laughed out loud. "Oh, come on! Friend? You brought your sugar daddy over there down here for the weekend for one thing only, so don't give me the innocent bullshit. And I know you can understand what I'm saying," he added sharply to Mitani.

Mitani had had enough, both of the man's unnerving grin and his presumption toward Izuru.

Apparently he was not the only one either, as the next moment Izuru had slapped a bunch of bills on the bar—he didn't even bother to count them out—and was pulling Mitani out of the establishment with him as fast as he was able without making a scene, leaving Hawaiian-shirt man chortling at the bar behind them. Even in the twilight outside, Mitani could see that his partner's cheeks were flushed, his eyes dark with anger—as if his hurried footsteps did not speak volumes already.

It could not have been the first time he had been on the receiving end of that kind of talk. Mitani might not have been the most observant instructor at Saint Michel, but he had witnessed enough of Fujisawa's and other boys' hallway banter to know that the young men who attended that Catholic institution had not been nearly as innocent and pious as they liked their professors to believe.

He grabbed Izuru's arm and made him stop.

He was not prepared for Izuru to turn on him. "Why didn't you say anything about it being a gay bar?" he yelled.

As if what that creep said was all _my_ fault, Mitani wanted to retort; but he held his tongue, and his temper. "I didn't realize it until that man had already started talking to you. I don't know why it didn't occur to me earlier. Rudy's. . . . It's an allusion to a Mishima novel."

"Sensei. . . ." Izuru let out a sigh of frustration.

"Look, I'm sorry it was a bust, but I wasn't going to be of any help to you in there, and that guy wasn't going to get us any closer to finding Grubel or our girl—"

"My, my. What was the rush in there? Was it something I said?"

The two turned to look back whence they had come. The voice was the same, but the words were Japanese, the accent from Kyushu, like Izuru's, and the pronunciation flawless. It had come from the man in the Hawaiian shirt, who had followed them out of the establishment, his toothy grin as wide as ever.

Now, however, both shinigami were fairly convinced, if only by their intuition alone, that he was not any ordinary American serviceman—if he was even an ordinary human.

"We're not interested, he said," Mitani told him, "so would you please leave us alone?"

"No can do, _Professor_ Mitani. My business is not with you, shinigami, but with your partner."

Mitani glanced at Izuru out of the corner of his eye, but the boy's gaze did not waver from the stranger's figure. There was a serious squint to his eyes, as though he knew he should recognize the man and was trying very hard to place him, but at the same time Mitani caught a trace of panic kept in close check just below the surface.

It did not make its way into Izuru's voice as he barked, "What do you want?"

To their surprise, the man folded a hand over his chest and bowed with a flourish that was eerily incongruous with his muscular frame.

"Only to serve you, my master. So many of your chosen have abandoned you for dead, found others less worthy to serve, but I have remained loyal, as you can see. Because I recognize you for who you are. Even if in a new body, I know you will live again, just as strongly as before. Which is more than can be said for your partner, I see. . . ."

The toothy grin cut once again across the man's face—one that had not even in his lewd remarks only minutes before lent him such a sinister appearance as it did now. It chilled Mitani to his core; he could only imagine what Izuru must be feeling inside—being the addressee of these ominous words. Words too ominous to be anything in this day and age but a joke.

One that neither Mitani nor his partner found amusing.

"Who are you?" he asked the stranger.

And almost regretted it instantly. The eyes that swiveled to meet his through the growing dark were downright malignant, and almost appeared to glow at the whites.

"The man you're looking for," the stranger said to Mitani, "you'll find he's already dead. In the bone fields behind base, back among the turtleback tombs. He wanted to take the child to the police, poor sod, but the boy wanted him _there_ instead."

"The boy?" Mitani said without thinking. "We're looking for a lost girl."

The stranger just shrugged. "Boy . . . girl . . . What's the difference anymore? They're in the same body, are they not? Though who can say for how much longer. If it's what the boy, the _dybbuk_, wants—"

"We asked you who you are," Izuru interrupted him, with an urgent sense of dread that made Mitani's own body tense with foreboding.

To their bewilderment, the stranger laughed as he bowed his head again, stretching out an arm as though in invitation.

"I'm a little dismayed you don't recognize your humble servant," he said, very clearly, to Izuru. "And after I've gone out of my way to do you this favor, too. But it's no matter. I won't give you my name in front of _that_ one, but I have confidence you will remember soon enough, when everything comes together and the part of you that remembers matures. When it does, you will find me there to serve you as I served _him_ before. . . ."

Izuru took a step toward the stranger, and as he did, Mitani reached into his pocket for a fuda that might exorcise this creature. He could not know it, but every word from that man was one step closer to the boy's loss of self-control. All he did know was that he did not like the way his partner was slowly moving toward the stranger, like—though he was loath to even entertain the analogy—like one possessed.

"In the meantime," the stranger continued, "give a message to Tsuzuki Asato for me, will you? Tell him his true Lord and Master is waiting for him to return to the throne that rightfully awaits him in Hell—"

"Ashtaroth," Izuru mouthed.

Despite the distance between them, and the ocean breeze that had picked up without warning, the stranger heard him, and his smile turned positively feral in satisfaction. "The fact that you can speak His name unfettered just dissolves the remainder of my doubt about you—"

"Get out," Izuru growled, then shouted. "Get out of him!" He did not even know where those words sprang from, nor the authority with which his voice seemed to issue the command. He simply knew it was the right thing to say as he commanded, "Leave us the hell alone!"

"As you wish, my liege."

The stranger stiffened on his feet. It was surreal, like a breakdancer mimicking a broken robot, but it was no act. The man's eyes, so white a moment ago, rolled up and his body went suddenly limp as though with the release of a large sigh—or as though the breeze had inexplicably knocked him over. He collapsed bonelessly to the pavement, and Izuru, stunned by it and putting his misgivings aside, rushed to the man's side.

Mitani tucked the fuda back inside his pocket before he joined his partner.

Izuru had turned the man over but seemed afraid to do anything else. Or else he simply did not know what else to do. Mitani felt for a pulse at the man's throat, put the back of his hand and then his ear under the man's nose. The man stirred slightly beneath him, letting out a barely audible moan on a breath that Mitani would have thought for sure would carry the reek of alcohol. "He must have just passed out," he said to Izuru in the meantime. "Help me get him back inside."

Instead, what burned his nose was a more rotten, acrid scent. He had to sniff twice before he believed it. "Christ. . . . He smells like a rotten egg," Mitani grunted as he hoisted the big man back to his feet.

"It's sulfur."

Mitani glanced up.

Izuru had given up trying to help him. In fact, he was staring past Mitani and the stranger as though they weren't even there. Something the stranger said had shaken him; that much Mitani could see in the boy's eyes. Something in those ominous words, words Mitani was not sure he wanted to know the full meaning behind. Izuru's partner couldn't recognize him for what he was, the man had said. Normally Mitani would have said that was preposterous; he knew Izuru better than anyone; but there was that guilty glaze over the boy's eyes that he could not ignore. . . .

Was there something Izuru was hiding from him?

"What did he mean," Mitani said across the unconscious man: " 'who you really are'?"

* * *

_A/n: _Yamatonchu_ is an Okinawan term for a person from the main islands of Japan. The VOH is entirely made up, as far as I know. Rudy is the owner of the gay bar in Mishima Yukio's novel _Forbidden Colors


	6. Communion

"What in heaven's name just happened?"

"Some sort of demonic spirit got into him," Izuru said evenly. "He'll be fine now. It must have been following us when it chose that guy to inhabit."

"Christ. . . ."

Leaning against the wall outside of Rudy's, Mitani ran a still trembling hand through his long hair.

They had managed to drag the man in the Hawaiian shirt back to the bar between them; and heavy though he had been—not to mention the sulfurous smell that still hung about him—Izuru had been more than content to focus on simply getting the man help, rather than on the question bound to be on his partner's mind that he dreaded answering above all others. He knew he was only putting off the inevitable, but it was all he could do.

And he knew that time was up before Mitani even spoke those next words.

" 'By whom do your sons cast them out'. . . ."

Izuru recognized the scripture, and it made him wince. That line had crossed his own mind as well, when he had seen the stranger collapse at his word. _If_ I _cast out devils by Beelzebub. . . ._ But what if that were exactly what he had done?

"Izuru," Mitani said to him, as though reading his mind, "how did you do that?"

"Do what, Sensei—"

"Get the spirit to leave him. Exorcise it. You did it with your words alone. You just commanded it to leave, and it followed your orders. Almost as if. . . ."

Izuru had been avoiding his former teacher's eyes, but now even that was unbearable. Uncrossing his arms from their defensive position across his chest, he pushed away from the wall. "We should go," he said quickly. "Follow up on this new information. Even if it did come from a demon, it's the best we've got right now, so we have no choice—"

"_Answer me_, Izuru!"

The boy stopped short as Mitani's fingers closed around his arm, turning Izuru roughly to face him, Izuru's shirt gripped tightly in his fist. "Stop avoiding the issue! Exactly what happened back there?" he demanded to know, in such a tone of voice as Izuru had not heard in a long time—not since Mitani had pleaded with him to put an end to their sins in his dark Saint Michel apartment. "That demon spoke to you like he knew you, like you were—like you were someone, some_thing_ else, Izuru. What the hell did he think you were?"

"Isn't it obvious? That was one of Focalor's legions! You remember him, don't you? The devil that possessed me? What do you fucking think he was getting at?"

"You're not him." Even now, Mitani wouldn't say the devil's name. "Tsuzuki and Kurosaki saw to that. They destroyed the devil that possessed your body."

"Possessed my _body_, Sensei! They didn't do anything to my soul!"

"What are you trying to say?"

"I'm saying he hasn't gone away!"

Suddenly the truth that frightened Izuru to even entertain let alone admit, that had felt like such an abysmal weight deep inside himself—like a black hole growing in his gut—all came out in a rush. He couldn't hold it back now if he wanted to. And he didn't want to. He wanted to shout it. All of it. At Mitani, at God—at everyone who was supposed to be there for him, and failed him when he needed them most.

"Focalor's still inside me!" His fist gripped the front of his own shirt, as though he would tear that piece of the devil out of himself for proof if he only could. "He's growing inside me, and every day what's left of him is getting stronger in my body!"

"Izuru. . . ."

The way his name slipped through Mitani's gritted teeth like a curse, he didn't have to say any more. Izuru knew exactly what his former teacher was thinking. They would never be free of that devil's influence. Even now they were in its shadow, and they couldn't do a damn thing to change that. Their deaths had been in vain, and this whole long road of rebuilding themselves in the afterlife had been based on a lie—a false expectation that the devil was finally gone. That the Izuru he worked and shared an apartment with was the real one.

And now Izuru was exposed for the liar he really was. Of course, it was all his fault to begin with. He had been the one to invite the devil in in the first place, and now it was here to stay. He could not rid himself of it. This is the end, Izuru thought. This will be our last case together. When we get back to Meifu, he'll put in a request for a transfer, and I'll get somebody else, and we'll never see each other. . . .

Mitani's hands on both his shoulders shook him from those dark thoughts.

"Tell me what you know in plain language. No more secrets, no exaggerations. I want to understand what's happening to you."

"No, you don't!" Izuru shook himself free. "You'll hate me for it. You won't want anything to do with me! God, Sensei . . . don't you see why I didn't want to involve you in this? You don't know when to just leave it alone—"

"And if you don't tell me—what do you think is going to happen then? Did you think this would just go away if you said nothing? How am I supposed to understand, Izuru—my God, how can I know I won't lose you if you don't tell me what's wrong?"

That made Izuru stop. Tears welled up in his eyes, but he blinked them back and swallowed deep, averting his gaze. If he was going to explain himself, it was too much to be asked to look Mitani in the eyes as he did so.

"Lately it seems like I've been able to . . ." He struggled to find the right words, but there was no way to make the abnormal sound normal. "Affect the flow of air and water, I guess, with my will. It's not something I can control—not yet anyway, but I'm working on it—but I asked Watari about it and he thinks Focalor left something of himself behind when he possessed me. That some of his essence transferred itself to my soul, or something like that. And it's been growing more and more powerful—like a virus multiplying in my bloodstream, he said. That's why I couldn't do these things before. That's why I never noticed what was happening to me until . . . Well, until this stuff just happened."

I didn't want to keep this from you, he thought but dared not add. At least, not initially. But don't you see why I had to do it?

Mitani's voice was almost a whisper. "Will the devil. . . . I mean, can Focalor ever take you over again?"

Izuru let out a shaky breath he hadn't been aware he was holding. "No. That was my concern too. But Watari said it's more like an echo of his former self." Even the scientist had not seemed entirely sure when he told the boy so adamantly not to worry about such a thing, but Izuru refused to entertain any doubt in that matter, especially now. "It's just that I can do the same things the devil could do."

"How long have you known?"

"I . . . I've been suspecting it since the night we retrieved Mr Oshiro's soul—"

As he had feared, Mitani stifled a curse at that revelation. "And now Watari knows. Who else?"

"No one else." Izuru shook his head. "I swear. He said he would keep it confidential—"

"What if the chief finds out about this, Izuru? Or Tatsumi—or King Enma himself? If that demon was able to recognize the devil's power in you tonight, I hate to think who else might be able to see it. Or what they might do to you if that were to happen."

Izuru could feel the heat rise to his face. In all his worrying, he had not bothered to ask himself that question except in passing; he had been too preoccupied with Mitani's reaction. However, wasn't the more pressing issue the question of his own safety? He could be hunted now for this: Now that that servant of Focalor knew about him, there was no telling how fast word would travel in Hell. Would he be pursued by other demons, hungry for his position and power, like Tsuzuki was?

Would he put Mitani in danger—again?

Izuru averted his eyes again, this time in shame. "I'm sorry, Sensei. I never meant to hurt you. I just thought . . . maybe, if you didn't know—"

"How did you think keeping this from me would help either of us?" How could you not trust me, Mitani's hard-edged voice seemed to ask. His fingers tightened in Izuru's shirt again, fingertips digging into the boy's skin. "I'm your partner, Izuru. No matter what else. What possessed you to think you could just hide this from me?"

"Because I knew when you found out, you'd never forgive me! And why should you, after all I've done? _I_ wouldn't, if I were you. Sensei, I didn't want to lose you!"

"Why in the world would you lose me?"

Izuru looked up again, barely able to believe Mitani had said what he thought he heard. That was when he felt the itch of tears on his cheeks. He quickly wiped them away with the back of his hand and swallowed the rest, finding, for once, he had nothing to say.

"You're right about one thing," Mitani said, lowering his voice in an attempt to keep it even. "I . . . don't really know how I'm supposed to take this. It's going to take a while for me to get used to the idea that a part of that devil is still in you."

"I understand. . . ."

"But I'm not going to let anything happen to you either," Mitani went on, his hands stronger on Izuru's shoulders with his conviction. "Not if I can help it. I love you, Izuru. I've never stopped loving you. We're in this thing together now, and I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure it stays that way. I won't lose you, whether it be to the devil or Enma or whoever. Whether _you_ like it or not."

Not knowing what to say, Izuru lowered his head and just nodded his gratitude. He didn't deserve this. Maybe Mitani would not have agreed—maybe he would have told Izuru he was beating himself up needlessly—but the fact remained, Izuru did not deserve this kindness.

I am in his debt, he told himself, and that knowledge felt like the proverbial weight of the world on his soul. Everything good I've ever done I owe to him, and what have I ever done to return his sacrifices but take, take, take? And now this. . . .

"Now can we forget about this whole mess until we don't have a case to worry about?" Mitani said. He picked up the pace again where Izuru had left off, heading further inland with Izuru a step behind as he explained, "That demon said we'd find Grubel's body back by the turtleback tombs behind the base, right?"

"The training grounds end up there in the forest," Izuru acquiesced, grateful for the change in subject.

"All right, so we might find Yuuko in there as well. But we need to have a strong arsenal going into this. We don't know just what we're dealing with. We never really have. That demon called Shinkichi a _dybbuk_. What does that mean?"

"It's the Yiddish term for a wandering spirit," Izuru said dully, to Mitani's questioning look. "I was into the occult for a time at Saint Michel." Perhaps, he thought in passing, that was a given, considering what happened there. "A dybbuk is a sort of hungry ghost, like Mr Oshiro said, that possesses people in order to finish something it couldn't in life."

"All right. Then we know _what_ it is, but we still don't know what it's capable of—what it's capable of doing to the girl."

"I think we should be less worried about how Shin will hurt the girl than how we might in trying to help her. He isn't like the devil that possessed me. Focalor didn't care what happened to my body. He thought it was fun to mutilate me, because he could animate my body whether it was alive or not. Hell, even if it was falling apart, it didn't seem to matter."

Izuru could sense Mitani's growing discomfort with this line of talk as he kept pace alongside his partner, but as far as he saw it, he had every right to speak the truth of the matter however he wanted. Had Izuru's dishonesty not been Mitani's problem in the first place? After all, it's my body that was possessed—he thought—and it doesn't bother me, so shouldn't I be able to say whatever I want about it?

"My point is," he went on, "Shin needs her body alive. He's going to protect it like it was his own, because to him that's essentially what it is. He won't hurt the girl, not as long as he believes he can't risk it. But that doesn't mean the very methods we might use to try and save her won't end up having the opposite effect."

Izuru was aware of Mitani's gaze on him long before his former teacher spoke. "How can you be so sure? About the boy's soul, I mean."

"Because I don't think Shin thinks like he's dead. Not really."

And that Izuru knew something about, having thought like a dead man himself long before his time was due.

—o—

It was something of a hike into the woods that blanketed the hills around Nago, but, like an ascetic monk, Mitani was grateful on one level for the physical exercise. They did not have much opportunity to speak as they concentrated on safely navigating their way through the trees and brush in the dark, nor could they dwell much on their respective worries.

It did not stop Mitani from trying to read Izuru's thoughts, however. If the revelation that the boy had given him about his newfound powers, and his continued connection to the devil that had possessed and killed him, weighed this heavily on Mitani's mind, he could only imagine how it haunted Izuru himself. No doubt as they walked he as preoccupied with second-guessing every move he had made over the last week—probably wondering how he could have hidden the truth from Mitani better. Yet despite his impetuous, even ofttimes rebellious nature toward others, he really was a mindful boy, Izuru. The guilt of his deception would torture him more than anything Mitani could say to him.

Then why do I find it so difficult to forgive him this thing he couldn't help? Is it just that he didn't feel he could trust me after all we'd been through, or am I taking his affliction just like the personal betrayal he feared I would? Either way, does that really make me a terrible person? It's not like _I_ asked for this to happen.

And Izuru did? That was the question Mitani asked himself, as his temper cooled and his head cleared.

In the meantime, the long stretches of silence between them were becoming almost as unbearable as the climb.

"You know . . . they say," Mitani huffed as they neared the top of the hill, "there are haunted places all over this island. Whether it's evil spirits, or the vengeful ghosts of ancestors in the tombs—"

"Or the spirits of people killed in the war," Izuru finished.

It sapped what scant little humor Mitani's remark had been made in. "Yes, that too," he said, sobering. "The way some people describe it, you'd think they're all just sitting out here waiting for some hapless tourist to run into—unless, of course, you're actually looking for them."

Izuru turned to look back the way they had come and stopped; and Mitani, seeing he was no longer being followed, did the same.

They had not come extraordinarily far, but from the grassy clearing on the hillside they had a perfect view of the city spread out down below them, tracing the outline of the coast like a spider's web that sparkled with the city lights and the reflected light of the moon. It felt to the former Christian history instructor a little like looking out at the present while standing in the past that was buried in the forest around them—not too unlike how he had felt on the ramparts of Saint Michel Preparatory School, imagining it to be the actual medieval abbey in Normandy as he gazed out at the night lights of the Nagasaki harbor.

"It's quite a view, isn't it?"

As though he had forgotten Mitani was there, Izuru turned abruptly at his words.

He opened his mouth to answer, but thought better of it when something else caught his eye. He squinted against the dark, and Mitani looked over his shoulder to follow his partner's line of sight.

At first he only saw a large mound of dirt, like another bulge in the hillside or a cairn; but as his eyes adjusted to the dark, there appeared to be an arch cut into it that was too symmetrical to be natural. "Is that . . ."

"One of those turtleback tombs the demon was talking about?"

As Izuru strode quickly past, it seemed he already had the answer to that question. The boy stopped at the archway, brushed aside the vegetation that had grown thick over it, and paused to examine the structure up and down. Taking in the whole of it, Mitani could imagine the rough shape of a tortoise shell in the hillside, protecting the spirits of the ancestors that were believed to abide inside of it from the rest of the world.

And protecting the living from attack. If I had lived here during the war, he thought, you can bet a place like this would be the first place I'd turn to for safety, regardless of superstitions.

"There's another one over here," Izuru said, and hurried a little farther into the brush.

"You think we're in the right area, then?"

"Maybe we're not too late. Maybe Yuuko's still around here."

Mitani blinked, and Izuru's form disappeared into the brush and shadow. He made to follow him, but there was no need to rush: The boy faded in and out of sight as he searched the vegetation with a stick for any sign of another human being, never too far from where Mitani could at least hear his progress.

"Careful," Mitani told him. "These woods are probably teeming with habu."

"Like we should care about that," Izuru's snarky reply came back to him.

But the silence that fell from his direction soon afterward was too well timed for Mitani to ignore. He hurried to where he had last seen Izuru, calling his name a few times as he pushed through the brush.

He need not have. Izuru was unharmed. The same could not be said, however, for the body that lay stretched out face-down in the grass.

"I think we found Grubel," Izuru said.

Shaking himself from his stare, Mitani turned to his partner. Despite how frankly he spoke of his own mortality, there remained something in others' deaths that seemed to frighten Izuru into inaction. Only after Mitani took the first step toward the body did he follow suit.

Mitani did not bother checking for a pulse. The man's flesh was deathly pale, and rigor had begun to set in. He was well built like a naval officer would be expected to be, but Mitani had to be sure. He pulled gently on the chain around the corpse's neck until dog tags came free, which confirmed what both had suspected, and what the possessing demon had told them from the beginning.

It was an instinctive gesture for Mitani to cross himself. Where others might have cursed, he turned for comfort to those vestiges of his childhood faith to which he still refused to let go.

It took more of an effort to do what he decided to do next. He grabbed the body hard by the shoulder, braced himself, and pulled with all his weight.

Izuru all but jumped back as he came face to face with the late Lt Grubel. "Christ, Sensei! What'd you have to do that for?"

"I had to make sure."

Even as he was saying so, however, Izuru was leaning in for a closer look. "Christ," he said again. "I guess it's no mystery how he died."

The front of Grubel's undershirt was almost black in the dark with his own congealed blood. It stuck the layers of fabric together as Mitani lifted one side of his shirt, covering his nose against the strong odor as he did so. "It looks like he's been stabbed several times."

"Just like Mr Saito."

"God, I swear the worst part of this case is coming to terms with the fact that our killer is an eight-year-old girl. An eight-year-old girl who can't even be held responsible for her actions because she isn't in control of them."

"Do you think—" Izuru started to say, but he stopped himself short.

If he had been about to ask the same question that was on the tip of Mitani's own tongue—whether Yuuko, wherever she was, was even aware of what she was doing—Mitani was grateful that he could not, or chose not to, finish it.

Instead, a small object glowing in the moonlight caught Mitani's attention. It was the silver chassis of an open cellphone, probably discarded by their killer, that had put itself to sleep to conserve power. Mitani brought the screen back to life with the touch of a button, whereupon he was able to see the number of the call that had been missed when the phone was tossed aside.

The name Saako Itosu was displayed above it.

—o—

To say the old woman was surprised to see them was an understatement. Indignation that they would be knocking at her door at such an ungodly hour warred for dominance on her features with fear for her safety, wondering how they had come about learning her address, as well as dread for what news their presence there could mean. "Mr Mitani, Okazaki-kun. What in the world—"

"I'm sorry to wake you, Mrs Itosu," Mitani said, with an urgency that guaranteed she would not shut the door on them just yet. "I know how late it is, but it was important we made sure that you were all right."

"All right?" Her gaze flickered quickly between the two. "Of course, I'm all right. Why wouldn't I be?"

"We have reason to believe the same person responsible for Mr Saito and Mr Nagamine's deaths might be after you—"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute—whoever said their deaths were connected? What is . . ." Suddenly wide awake, Mrs Itosu stuck her head out the door to look around the neighborhood, but what she was looking for Izuru could not say. If she thought someone was playing a trick on her, she could not have been farther from the mark. "What is this?" she said in a lower voice as she met their eyes again. "I thought you two were reporting on our organization's armistice event. What would you even know about those two? Who the hell _are_ you?"

"We can't explain that all now," Mitani said. "But I beg you to trust us. We just want to protect you—"

"Stephen Grubel is dead," Izuru said.

He could sense Mitani's disapproval beside him, but it had to be said. As far as he could see, the fastest way to get through to the old woman, to get her to believe them, was to tell her the truth, shocking though he knew it would be. Maybe it was Izuru's own impatience that had pushed him to such lengths, but now that the words were out, he could not take them back, or smooth them over. "We found his body in the hills, out by the turtleback tombs—"

"My god. . . ." Mrs Itosu's hand flew to her mouth.

"He'd been murdered," the boy continued, "like Mr Saito. Look, suffice it to say, we have reason to believe you might be the killer's next target. Have you felt like anyone was watching you this evening? Thought you might have glimpsed that missing girl from the news out of the corner of your eye?"

"No—what does that have to do . . ." Mrs Itosu pulled herself back little by little with each of his questions, trying to tear her eyes from his and back to Mitani's, where she might find some more rational explanation.

"I think it's best if we explain inside," he said quickly, the hard edge in his voice no doubt meant as a warning to Izuru.

And Mrs Itosu must have realized that she did not have much of a choice. She moved aside to let them in, and told them anxiously as she closed the door behind them that she would put on water for tea.

As they drank, Mitani filled her in on his version of events. It was full of half-truths—in some places, in response to some of her more cutting questions, outright lies—but Izuru did not contradict his former teacher. He trusted Mitani enough to decide what aspects of their mission were safe for the old woman to know, and just tried to commit as much of this edited story about their supposed careers as freelance investigators to memory as he was able.

Perhaps he should not have been as surprised as he was by his partner's poker face in the telling, but he had always seen only Mitani's sincere side—in life and in death. It simply had not occurred to him before to ask how Mitani had fooled his colleagues and the school's priest for so long where their relationship was concerned—to say nothing of the facts about Izuru's death. For some reason, he had thought the guilt of lying would have prevented Mitani from becoming as proficient in the art form as he apparently was. Perhaps that was partly responsible for Izuru's relative silence as they passed the early hours of morning.

As the sky gradually lightened to the dusty, rosy tint of dawn, the land surrounding Mrs Itosu's house came into clearer focus. The neighborhood where she lived was an old one, at least compared to the newness of the surrounding city, that sat on a bluff overlooking a rocky stretch of the coast. The whining of insects in the thick vegetation gave way to the cries of various birds, the sea below growing bluer in tandem with the sky.

Mrs Itosu, though perhaps still uncomfortable with what it meant, grew resigned to their presence in her home; and when Mitani turned with her permission to the kitchen for breakfast, she turned to Izuru for conversation, asking him with a sigh if he wanted something a bit stiffer with his tea, considering it appeared they would be staying a while. If she was going to have a cup of awamori, she insisted, he could not in good conscience as a guest refuse to have just one himself.

He learned she had been born in the Ryukyus to _yamatonchu_ parents, who returned to their homes farther north during the famines of the late-Taisho era. "They said during that time, in the islands, that they were living in 'sotetsu hell'," she explained. "It sounds like one of those pits they torture souls in in the afterlife, doesn't it?"

Izuru caught himself before he could say she must be familiar with Meifu's processing division, but Mrs Itosu's story was no laughing matter.

"There was so little food available people actually decided it was worth the risk to try boiling the poison out of the sotetsu fruit, and just hope they prepared it right. The choice was between certain death by starvation, and possible death by food poisoning. My late husband was fortunate enough to have lived through that when he was too young to remember. A lot of children his age didn't. He said his parents would always talk about those times during the war, to bolster their spirits. If they could live through one hell, they said. . . ."

"Did you two meet in the service?" Izuru asked out of curiosity.

But Mrs Itosu shook her head. "I was working in a factory in Kitakyushu when the war ended. We didn't meet until many years later, when I came back here nostalgic for that simpler place I remembered from my childhood. Needless to say, I didn't find that place. Not for a few more decades, in any case."

"And you co-founded the Veterans for Okinawan Harmony." Izuru knitted his brows as the pieces came together. "But you weren't a veteran. I mean . . . not really."

"In those days, they said we were all soldiers in the war effort," Mrs Itosu said, "even if our job was simply making new parts for guns from scrap metal, or even just raising good, patriotic children at home." She sighed, her narrow shoulders slumping over her empty teacup. "Maybe it was survivor's guilt that was ultimately responsible for my involvement, though. I had to do something to compensate for what I didn't go through, that my husband and his friends did."

"As penance," Izuru said under his breath.

Perhaps Mrs Itosu did not hear, because she said nothing. Perhaps she merely pretended for his sake that she hadn't.

—o—

Despite their warnings, Mrs Itosu refused to let the threat of a stalker keep her from buying her groceries at the public market. Besides, she said, what could happen with two strapping young men to protect her? Maybe it was just Mitani's imagination then, but he had still felt all day like they were being watched, and that suspicion did not stop even when they returned to Mrs Itosu's house.

As she prepared a dinner of champuru for the three of them in the kitchen, Izuru confessed around the table that he had felt the same way. "I guess it goes without saying, I think we made the right decision in coming here."

"But are we really on the right track, is what I want to know. There's still something I'm missing here. Why would Shinkichi's soul want to take revenge on Mrs Itosu?"

"You're expecting the ghost of a ten-year-old boy to be logical, Sensei?"

"Well, she didn't do anything to wrong him."

"Neither did Grubel," Izuru said matter-of-factly, concentrating unnecessarily hard on his teacup. "Or the others, for that matter. It wasn't about the individuals."

"If that's the case, why would he be targeting the people who were probably closest to his brother in his last years? This has all the signs of a personal vendetta."

"Yeah, but who said it had to be about his brother?"

"What do you mean? What part?"

"All of it."

Mitani looked up at his partner, who leaned his cheek against his hand and his elbow on the table as though he were bored. It was not ennui that was responsible for the distant look on his features, however.

"Mrs Itosu said something to me this morning that I haven't been able to get out of my mind," Izuru said softly, as though self-conscious the old woman might hear. "During the war, everyone was a part of the war effort. No matter what their actual job was, everyone was a soldier in the service of the empire."

"Of course. That was how the war machine worked. That wasn't necessarily how people thought down here, though."

"Yeah. I know."

Maybe that was his point, Mitani thought a little belatedly. But he still felt like he was missing some vital connection.

And Izuru did not seem in any hurry to clarify. He lowered his arm and his voice.

"_Naa_, Sensei. . . . Look. I know I screwed up, but I can't stand this pretending like I never said anything. You have every right to be angry with me. I just want you to know I really am sorry I didn't say anything to you sooner. I mean—"

"We don't have to talk about it now if you don't want to," Mitani said quickly. But if he were honest, it had nothing to do with how comfortable Izuru felt about the subject. "You already said everything you needed to. I . . ."

I shouldn't have pushed you so hard for the truth, he thought, when I should have understood how difficult it was. But, no, I _needed_ to hear it. I needed to hear you _say_ it. . . .

Letting out a small sigh, he met Izuru's eyes. "I just need time to think about what you told me, is all. All these changes you've been going through, these new abilities of yours, if that's what they are, it's . . . Well, it's a lot for me to digest at the moment. Especially in the middle of a case."

They already had enough on their plate worrying about the soul of a possessed girl. He did not need any more reminders of Izuru's own case, still vivid in his mind if he allowed those memories to resurface. He did not need the added concern that while they were trying to fix one possession, his partner might be trying to hold off a recurrence of another.

Right now, the last thing he needed was the possibility, however slight, that he might lose Izuru to the devil all over again.

And the hardest part was accepting that, if that were to happen, there was nothing Mitani could do about it.

"Can we please just concentrate on helping Yuuko? For now?" he barely managed to say.

Across the table, Izuru opened his mouth to say something—no doubt in his own defense—but reluctantly thought better of it, looking down at his cup again. But seeing his brows knitted in the turmoil Mitani didn't want him to express, filled the former teacher with self-loathing.

From the kitchen, they heard a sharp yelp and the clattering of a pan.

The two were on their feet and at the kitchen door in a heartbeat, Mitani breathing a sigh of relief when he found Mrs Itosu unharmed, however visibly shaken.

"I saw the girl from the news," she told them breathlessly, clutching her chest in one hand and the handle of the pan she had spilled in the other. "It gave me a fright is all. But I'm afraid the champuru is ruined."

Izuru could not have cared less about that. "Where was she?"

"The girl? I-I saw her face at the window, just behind those hibiscus—"

"Are you sure?" Mitani asked her.

But Izuru was out the back door before she could answer, racing into the garden with the sole intent of finding Yuuko.

"Izuru, wait!" Mitani called after him, but he knew it was useless, even if his partner did hear him. Even more than putting an end to this case, he knew Izuru would be determined to correct what he had failed to do back at Oshiro's nursing home. Until he did that, nothing else would even register on his radar. Gritting his teeth, Mitani ran back for his jacket where he had left it folded by the dinner table. "I'm sorry," he said hurriedly to the old woman, torn between explaining himself and rushing after his partner, "but I've got to . . . Just stay inside and lock your doors."

"Why? What's going on—"

"Just do that for me! I'm sorry, but I don't have time to explain."

The rugged land nearly threatened to trip him up as he charged down the hillside after Izuru. Granted the boy had the right idea—they couldn't afford to let the girl and Shinkichi's spirit escape them again—but just what did he think he was going to accomplish out there without a plan, let alone the arsenal they agreed they would need once they caught up to their rogue spirit?

He called out to Izuru, but his partner showed no signs of slowing. He had spotted Yuuko, and was chasing after the girl at a breakneck speed as she ran frantically out toward the rocks that jutted out into the reef. Mitani could hardly believe his eyes at first: The girl was right in front of them, in the flesh, alive. And about to run herself straight out into mortal danger.

Yuuko must have finally realized the same thing. She slowed and wavered in indecision, seeing she had nowhere else to go but into the ocean. It allowed Izuru the chance to catch up to her. As she doubled back, he grabbed the collar of her T-shirt, whipping her back.

Mitani held his breath.

But without even losing her balance, the girl turned on him like a wild thing, lashing out with a force that surprised both the shinigami. It made Izuru loosen his grip and hold his arm tight to his chest. He looked up, grimacing, and spotted Mitani. "Sensei!"

But Mitani was ready for her, already altering his course to intercept. Yuuko did not see him coming as she ran back for the safety of the brush-covered hill. He had a split second to pray that the fuda he whipped out would do the job—and not hurt the girl more than he intended—before the moment came to use it.

Yuuko managed only a squeak of pain before the shock of the fuda's spiritual impact knocked the breath out of her. She fell back to the ground, stunned and grunting in discomfort, but otherwise it did not appear she would suffer any permanent damage.

Izuru was out of breath as he ran up to them. "What happened?" Mitani asked him.

"She cut me!"

Panting, he raised his arm so that Mitani might see the fresh blood trickling down the inside of his bicep. Mitani let out his breath. He had been expecting worse while watching from afar; and either way, the wound would quickly heal.

The girl was another matter. They may have found her alive, but her skin was an unhealthy color beneath her sunburn, and there were dark circles under her eyes. No doubt she was famished, and probably dehydrated as well. Her boyishly cut hair was a matted mess, her T-shirt and shorts torn by the vegetation and smeared with blood, though most of that was rather obviously not hers. Some time ago, it seemed, she had tried in vain to wash out the stains. She still had the Swiss Army knife with which she had attacked Izuru clasped tight in her hand, which the boy pried out. She must have stolen it from Grubel's body, was all Mitani could think, because their victim's wounds had been much deeper, more grotesque, and less sophisticated then what that knife could deliver.

Izuru exhaled hard as he tucked the knife into his back pocket. "Nice save," he said, nodding to Mitani's handiwork with the fuda.

Maybe it was his down-to-business tone of voice that set Mitani on edge, but he shrugged it off as the product of adrenaline.

"It won't hold her forever," he said. "We'll have to restrain her until we can figure out what to do about Shin."

They drew a circle into the ground around the girl, outside of which she would be unable to move when she regained her faculties, and her strength. Tsuzuki may have been a good teacher of basic fuda charms, but perhaps it was due to his affinity for Christian history and ancient languages that Mitani had taken to Kabbalistic magic as his forte. Each Greek or Hebrew character drew a stronger connection between his will and the girl, fortifying the restraining charm with layers of redundancy. The living Mitani would have balked at the mere idea of performing a spell like this, dismissing it as forbidden, dark magic, an affront against God and the strictures of the bible; but he and Izuru had dealt with enough demonic spirits over the last few years as shinigami for him to accept it now as a necessity in their line of work, whatever else it might be.

Izuru helped him set his snare, distracted though he might have been with the problem of what to do next. It was when the girl finally overcame the effects of the fuda that their work was put to the test.

She sat up with a start, disoriented, looking wildly around herself. When she attempted to rise to her feet and failed, that was when she panicked, grunting with each renewed and ultimately futile effort to the point of tears. "Wha's wrong? Why can' I move my legs? This can' be—wha's wrong with my legs?" Her eyes widened at the lines that glowed above the rocks in a circle around her. "_Wha's wrong with me?_"

"You're under a restraining spell," Mitani told her.

"No. . . . _No!_ You can' do this t' me! Lemme go, _lemme go!_"

She screamed at the top of her lungs, and Mitani's first instinct was to look around them for signs of any mortal who might hear her and interfere, getting the wrong idea. Even though there were homes up on the bluff not far away, however, the three appeared to be completely isolated by the geography and the brush, their conversation drowned out by the rush of the tide.

"And you'll stay in that circle," Mitani said above her screaming, "until the time we decide it's all right to release you. The sooner you cooperate, the sooner we do that."

"There's nowhere to run, Shin," Izuru said beside him.

As though those were the magic words, the girl's wide eyes snapped up to his. She didn't breathe as her gaze flicked from one to the other, focusing on her captors for the first time. Then they abruptly darkened with the shock of recognition.

"_You_," she growled. "You're the ones came an' took my Eiki from me. . . . You're the ones killed my brother! Murderers! Japanese pigs, I'll kill you!"

"Do we need any more proof than that?" Izuru said, rolling his eyes at her empty threats. "That's Shinkichi speaking. No doubt about it."

"Now how do we make sure Yuuko is still in there?"

It was a rhetorical question, one Mitani was determined to find out one way or another. He did not expect Izuru to be serious about what he said next.

"I want to attempt _reibaku_ on her."

Perhaps he had merely been making a statement, but Mitani instinctually reached out to stop him from even attempting to perform the risky soul-binding spell. He gripped Izuru's arms in his hands, shaking the boy so that his eyes—which were still glued on Yuuko—might meet his. "I really don't think that's a good idea, Izuru. You've never performed one of those before."

"I know the procedure inside and out. Besides, Kurosaki did it successfully the first time he tried."

"And you're not Kurosaki!" It was a struggle, but Mitani kept his voice low for the girl's sake. "You don't have the benefit of empathy, and this isn't another shinigami we're dealing with. Besides that, you're nowhere near his level of control—and don't you dare fool yourself into believing this Focalor thing has made you invincible. It's a living girl on the line, who—if we do this right—ought to have a long life ahead of her yet. What would Enma do to you if you accidentally destroyed her soul because you were untested, or underestimated the spirit possessing her? Not even that—do you really want that girl's death on your hands if it backfires?"

"But you said yourself, Sensei: We don't know if Yuuko even _is_ still in there. If I could get inside her head and just _answer_ that question—"

"I won't allow you to do it."

Izuru's gaze darkened with an indignation Mitani had rarely seen since that time they were both alive. It made him release the boy like he had been burned when Izuru shrugged him off, but he was no less determined to stand up to his former student if he should try to carry out such a risky maneuver.

"What do you suggest we do then?" Izuru asked him, and Mitani was loathe to admit he was not too sure himself. "This isn't some demonic spirit we're dealing with either. We can't just exorcise Shin's soul like he was one of them. He won't play by the same rules they're bound to."

He had a valid point. It was that same conundrum that weighed heavily on Mitani's mind as well. Despite their experience with exorcisms, this case was different. It was more delicate, less predictable. And precedent did not leave much room for hope: There were few cases on record indeed of a tenacious possessing spirit like theirs leaving its host peaceably, let alone alive.

Mitani looked back over his shoulder at the girl, who seemed so forlorn with her tattered clothing and wild appearance as she struggled to free her deadened limbs. It would have been all too easy to take pity on her, and forget that the consciousness behind her eyes was that of a boy killer who had been dead for over half a century.

Mitani was already having difficulty separating the two.

"We might have to take her in for this one," he said quietly to Izuru.

—o—

Izuru shook his head. To take the girl back to Meifu with them was no different than admitting defeat. He was no longer some novice running to Tsuzuki or Watari when a problem came up he could not solve. That aside, he was too angry with their current situation to entertain that as a possibility.

Angry with the girl for allowing herself to be possessed, just like he had, and with Shinkichi's soul for leading them on this chase with so many senseless victims and so little to go on. And with Mitani for holding him back, even when he knew his former teacher was right.

Most of all, though, Izuru was angry with himself. He had already screwed up enough on this case, and not just where his partnership with Mitani was concerned. If I hadn't let Shin's soul get away from me at that nursing home, he kept reminding himself, those people would still be alive. If I hadn't been so afraid of what was inside me. . . .

"No. We exhaust all our options here first. Then, if we still can't make any headway—that's when we take them back to Meifu."

He brushed past Mitani to face the girl in the circle again, and Mitani was quick to put a hand on his shoulder. "What are you planning to do?"

The suspicion in his tone just grated further on Izuru's nerves. "I'm just going to talk to him is all," he said. "The way I see it, the best place to start is with some answers."

He said this pointedly to the girl, who glared back. "I don' owe you yamatonchu devils nothin'," Shinkichi said from within her. "You took my Eiki from me!"

Izuru allowed himself a smirk at the choice of words as he kneeled down across from Yuuko. "See, I don't see it that way, Shin. We went through a lot of trouble to track you down, and we're not going to leave you alone until you come out of that girl's body, and come back with us for judgement where you belong. Where you should have gone decades ago."

The girl tried to match his grin as she snorted, but it was forced, and brittle with fear.

"I ain' goin' nowhere. She invited me in. 'Cause she felt bad for me, she says. I'm within my rights t' stay jus' where I am, an' there's nothin' you can do 'bout it."

"Is Yuuko still in there?" Mitani asked, on her other side.

Shin laughed with a resignation belying his years. "Wha's it matter anymore? This's _my_ body now. I ain' givin' it back. You can do whatever you wan'. I ain' leavin'."

"And you'd just let the girl's soul die?" Izuru said. "After what she did for you? Killing those people for you, Shin. . . . You know that's what'll happen if you stay in her body, don't you? You'll kill her. Do you really want to be responsible for that?"

A look of fear and doubt crossed Yuuko's face momentarily, but no sooner had it appeared than she had shaken it off.

"'S a little late for that now, i'nit? 'S not that that was my intent, you see. Jus' that I'm gonna live. I already decided. I'm gonna live like they ne'er lemme."

"Is that why you killed those people?"

The girl shut her mouth. Shin refused to answer.

"Is that why you brutally attacked an old man who never did anything to you—"

"He did too! That stinkin' Japanese . . . We was jus' tryin' t' keep safe from the bombs! He busted int' the tomb and jus' started shootin' 'cause we wouldn' leave!"

"Mr Saito did that?"

"I don' know! They's all guilty, ain' they? They's all fightin' for the stupid emperor!"

"And Mr Nagamine?"

"He's a damn traitor bastard! Killin' and robbin' his own people—he deserved what he got! Same's that American white devil—"

"He was twenty-eight years old! He never even fought in the war, Shin!"

"_It doesn' goddamn matter! None a' any a' that woulda happened if he hadn'a come here in the first place!_"

"Then it wasn't about your brother, was it?" Mitani said—and Izuru had to wonder if he still pitied the spirit after Shinkichi's little tirade. "All this time you were trying to get revenge for what happened to you."

The girl merely stared at Mitani. But the shinigami no longer needed an answer to that question.

"Then you're not just reliving the war," he said. "You're not still stuck in nineteen-forty-five. You know you're dead. You just won't accept it. That's why you're going after everyone you blame for what happened during the fighting. The Japanese, the Americans, the Okinawans—they're all guilty in your mind, aren't they?"

Shin continued to glare back at Mitani just as darkly as ever.

"The war's been over for fifty-six years, Shin."

"And that doesn' mean they ain' jus' as guilty? They murdered me, can' you get that int' your ugly heads? But what'd you two know? You're murderers your bloody selves! I oughtta kill you! When I get outta here—"

"We did what we had to," Izuru said quickly, seeing his chance. "Ending your brother's life. It was our job. And not only that. He was suffering, Shin, all on account of you—"

"No, no!" If she were able, the girl would have put her hands over her ears. As it was, she shook her head violently, as though in doing so she might keep the accusations from sticking. "I was jus' tryin' to protect him—"

"He was in pain and wanted to die! All you did was keep him trapped in a body that was failing him, with memories he wanted nothing more than to forget!"

"That ain' true!"

In his frustration, Izuru clenched his teeth to the point they ached, but it was all he could do not to reach out and grab the girl, and try to shake some sense into the boy's ghost. He was all too aware of how little time they had left for Yuuko's soul, and now it seemed Shinkichi's hold of her body only grew more powerful with each fervent denial. Izuru wasn't sure he'd be able to forgive himself, if he let another soul end up like his, simply because he did not try hard enough.

"Tha's not wha' I did!" the boy was adamant, however. "I swear! I was helpin' him!"

"Not according to your brother."

"No! You're jus' tryin' t' trick me, tha's all. I know what I did was right! What would you know about it anyway? You're jus' another killer like them! All you know how t' do is take life! You ain' dead. You weren' murdered. You don' know the first thing 'bout how it feels!"

Izuru backed up a step despite himself, his heart skipping a beat as those words hit too close to home. The boy's ghost seemed to take his reaction as a small victory; but as for Izuru, he could hardly believe Shinkichi had allowed him such an opportune opening.

"So you would listen to me if I were dead like you? Is that what you're saying?"

The girl blinked. "That ain' what I—"

"You said I couldn't understand what you were going through, Shin," Izuru snapped back, relentless. "You said I couldn't understand why you did what you did because I didn't go through the same shit as you. Because I wasn't killed. Is that what you're saying?"

His confrontational style got through—at least on one level. The girl snarled back at him, taxing Mitani's concentration as she lunged once again against her spiritual restraints.

"You _don'_ know what it's like!" Shinkichi wailed from within her. "They _murdered_ me! My whole family— They shot us all up an' jus' left us there like we was jus' meat t' rot! They all deserved to die, the whole stinkin' lot of them! I did the right thing, endin' their no-good, mis'rable lives, and so help me I'd do it again—"

"Don't you dare tell me I don't know how that feels!" Izuru's words struck the girl like a sharp slap. "Do you want to know what happened to me?" The rings of scar tissue around his fingers itched at the memory. "Should I give you all the gory details?"

"Izuru. . . ." Mitani warned him, but Izuru, though he heard, did not pay him any attention.

Besides, Shinkichi was too busy yelling over him: "What the hell d'you know? You ain' dead! You don' know wha's like t' suffer, t' live in constant fear somethin's gonna fall outta the sky and kill you! You ne'er had a hard day in your life—"

Izuru began to shake his head at the boy's ranting soul, and as he did so he caught a movement in the grass nearby them. Almost as though it had come in response to his frustration. Perhaps Izuru was being reckless, perhaps Shinkichi's yelling had not left him in the clearest frame of mind, but he found himself rising to move toward it nonetheless, a plan quickly unfolding in his head.

"No matter what happens, Sensei," he said quickly to Mitani, "don't let him move."

Mitani nodded, but the girl panicked inside the circle regardless when he said that. "What're you gonna do t' me!"

"I'll show you dead, Shin," Izuru told her through gritted teeth, with an intensity that would not allow her to look away. "Will you listen to me then, you little brat?"

And he punctuated the last words by grabbing hold of the gold and black snake he had glimpsed in the grass. It seemed not to even attempt to evade Izuru's grasp as he gripped it hard a third of the way down its length.

The girl screamed when Shin recognized it, "You crazy? Tha's a habu! You tryin' t' kill yourself?"

But Izuru knew damn well what it was. Like the man at the bar, he had half a mind to think the viper knew what he was, too, deep down inside. It merely wriggled lethargically in his hand, disoriented but without any fear for its safety.

What's wrong with you, Izuru thought. Go ahead and bite me, you stupid animal! Sink your fangs in as deep as they'll go! What the hell are you waiting for? I'll snap you in half if you don't, I swear it.

He had no idea if his feelings got through to the animal, or if it just took a little bit longer for shock to wear off and instinct to kick in. Either way, Izuru could feel the snake's already rapid heartbeat leap under his tight grip as it twisted between his fingers and struck the inside of his arm, quick and hard. Then once again it hit home, this time on the wrist, the fangs sinking deep into Izuru's veins before he tossed the viper into the bushes away from the three of them.

Izuru's jaw ached from clenching it so hard against the pain of those blows; and as he sucked in his breath, like a signal catching up, it all sank into him at once. The force of the blow, the venom shooting like fire up his arm—it was more than he had prepared himself for. He was no longer sure if even the wounds he had inflicted on himself that had ultimately killed him had been this painful at the time. He grunted, barely stifling the cry that had wanted to come out, and doubled over his wounded arm in agony.

Through the tears that sprang up, he could see Mitani raise himself off one knee, ready to go to him. "Izuru—"

"Don't touch me, Sensei, you promised! Don't break that spell!"

"But the venom!" the girl shouted. "You have to get it out _now_ or it'll be too late!"

"He doesn't want us to help him," Mitani told her, and the painful resignation in his voice hit Izuru in the pit of his stomach almost as hard as the snake's blow. "Don't you get that?"

"But . . ."

The girl's gaze flickered anxiously between both of the shinigami in disbelief, before finally fixing on Izuru. Still, the young shinigami knew better than to hope the fear in Yuuko's eyes was anything other than Shinkichi's fear for the well being of his own soul should Izuru die now, while Mitani still would not allow him to run.

Izuru only regretted that he had not been able to win the ghost's trust without resorting to what were only now so clearly excruciating measures when Shin said, "You're dead."

That was the point, Izuru thought. That had been the point all along.

He just prayed, as he felt the venom's fire move at an unbearably leisurely pace up past his shoulder to fill his chest, that whatever end his hastily constructed plan would ultimately send him to would just hurry up and come soon. It took all his effort to kneel down at his place across from Mitani and the girl again, without collapsing completely to the ground on his trembling legs. He did not know how much more of this he could stand, and it had just started.

And he prayed that this might work, and he had not just unintentionally sent himself on a one-way trip to oblivion. Even worse than the pain was the thought that all of it might be in vain.


	7. Consecration

Yuuko sniffled, and a tear escaped her to trickle slowly down her dirty cheek. Even then, however, Mitani could find little sympathy left for the girl—or rather, for the ghost of the boy who now feared for his own life, or whatever semblance of life he had left or had stolen, as he watched Izuru fight to remain upright.

The rocky ground hurt Mitani's knees, but he was determined to focus his concentration on the restraining spell that kept the girl and the extra spirit inside her in their circle. Izuru was counting on him to do that much.

How he had gotten it into his head that poisoning himself would somehow be a good idea was another matter. And for that, Mitani could not blame Shin, no matter how easy it was to do so. The boy's spirit was stubborn, but that was no reason for Izuru to feel it necessary to take these potentially disastrous measures.

What if the venom does kill him before his shinigami body can metabolize it? What if he dies and doesn't come back? I told him I couldn't lose him again, and this is what he does to himself—

Mitani shut his eyes tight and focused on the girl and Shin. He could not afford for his energy to be sidetracked. Only his determination not to let Izuru's choice be made in vain prevented him from rushing to the side of his former student, the girl be damned. Her safety, the ghost's retrieval, his own job and existence—none of that meant anything if he lost Izuru for good. But nor could he let his partner down.

His partner. . . . As though that were all their relationship consisted of anymore, coworkers.

"Sensei."

The effort it took Izuru to say that word with an even voice stirred Mitani back to the present.

His wounded arm held tight around his midsection, Izuru swallowed hard before he spoke again, for Mitani alone. "I'm gonna figure out a solution to this. You have to believe me."

"Wha's gonna happen t' me?" Yuuko's teary voice was jarring in the eerie calm that had descended upon the three. "He ain' gonna last much longer—"

"And all you can think about is your own skin?" Mitani shot back.

"He's right, Sensei."

Izuru looked sickly pale in the reddening light of the sunset. Except for his wounded arm, that was, that Mitani could see was swollen and red no matter how hard the boy tried to hide it against his body. Sweat gleamed on his temples, and on his bobbing throat. "Maybe a couple minutes before I pass out. Enough time for Shin to start talking."

Mitani could not abide his casual tone of voice considering the gravity of his situation. He could not imagine what pain Izuru was in, but somehow his former student was determined to fight it, losing battle though they both knew it to be.

He turned to Yuuko. "Well? Do you plan on explaining yourself?"

"I already told you," Shin said, still defiant. "I killed 'em 'cause of what they did t' me. I still believe they deserved it, no matter what you say."

"But why those people? Because your brother knew them? Because you thought they abandoned him when he tried to take his own life?"

Yuuko bit her lip and shook her head, though it seemed more in some stubborn refusal to answer than it was an answer itself.

"Because they were convenient?" Izuru croaked.

"Because you knew where to find them through their connection to your brother?"

"I ne'er meant t' do it!" Shin blurted out. "I was mad when you killed my Eiki. I wanted t' make you give him back, but I was scared. _He_ scared me," the girl said, nodding at Izuru. "With his evil powers. So I had t' run. I didn' mean t' kill that lady—"

"Mrs Miyagi."

"But she was a nurse, jus' like them. She hated my brother. Abandoned him jus' like all those other traitors. . . ."

A sinister smile pulled at the corners of Yuuko's mouth, or perhaps it was a grimace. "I got her back," the ghost said. "And then I ran int' that man Eiki used t' know goin' int' the hospital. I recognized him from the picture. I told him what happened. He couldn' see me, but he could hear me, jus' like Eiki and that bitch nurse. I told him he was gonna pay for what he did t' his own people. It scared him, jus' the same's that nurse, and that was when . . . He took one'a the needles outta the drawer. . . ."

"And you ran," Izuru managed between heavy breaths. He was listing dangerously over his wounded arm now. "You saw he was dead . . . and you ran, Shin . . . like a coward . . ."

He never finished that thought. With a muffled grunt, he collapsed on his side and lay still, his eyes shut tight in pain.

"Izuru!" Mitani said, but his partner did not answer.

The girl started when he fell over, backing up against the far end of her circle as far away from Izuru as she was able. "Is he dead, is he dead?" she screeched, choking on tears of fear.

Izuru's wishes be damned, Mitani thought, as he hurried to his former student's side and rolled him over, cradling Izuru's head on his lap. A weak breath still escaped the boy's dry lips, but his flesh was clammy and pale as death.

Just like that night, Mitani thought, when he took his life. . . . When he died in my arms, and I couldn't—_didn't_ do anything. . . .

And it was happening all over again.

I'm going to lose him all over again. Just like I was afraid of. He must have known that, and yet he did this to himself willingly. . . .

Mitani brushed Izuru's sweat-dampened hair from out of his eyes, and the boy stirred but did not wake. His heartbeat was weak and out of sync beneath Mitani's fingers, and becoming more difficult to find with each passing second. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Yuuko slowly gather her limbs closer like she were biding her time for the moment to bolt. "You stay right where you are," he said, sealing the magic of the circle back up with his words.

The girl visibly shook herself at that, the ghost's anger darkening her eyes.

"_No!_ Lemme _go!_" she wailed again. "You're gonna kill me, aren' you? I jus' know it—"

"No one is going to kill you, Shin, or the girl you're holding hostage in there. But you've got to come out of her. I won't let you go until you've agreed to do that."

She bit her lip, shaking her head violently. "I can' . . . I don' wanna die."

"You're already dead. You know that. We don't want to hurt you. We only want to take you back somewhere safe—"

"'Til what happened to him!" Her eyes were wild as she stared at Izuru's still form. "You're lyin'! You're gonna kill me for it, when I didn' do nothin' to 'im! He jus' did that t' hisself!"

"He risked his life on the off chance that you might listen to him, Shin, so don't tell me you're blameless if he dies! He just as sure as killed himself for the sake of that girl, Yuuko, whose body you've taken, and you sit there pitying your own soul expecting me to feel sorry for you? You selfish brat. . . . How many chances have you already had to do things right, and you think you deserve another?"

The girl froze at Mitani's tone of voice; and perhaps it was wrong of him to shout, he realized in passing, rather than reign in the self-control that was necessary if he were to win the battle with this spirit.

But he could no longer feel a pulse at Izuru's throat, nor discern any rise or fall of his chest. He could not even sense whether his partner and former student—no, the person he loved, whom he knew better sometimes than even Izuru himself—was still clinging to life. Mitani's grief and anger overwhelmed his sense of shame; it would be all too easy to let them take over his words.

But he lowered his voice, as he looked up from Izuru's still face into the girl's eyes.

"You owe it to _him_, Shin. Whether you like it or not, you owe him for what he's sacrificed for you. For your trust, of all things—"

Izuru, you idiot, he wanted to curse. How many times do you have to do this to me? When you know what you do to me. . . .

"It doesn' matter now." Teary-eyed again, Yuuko yanked her deadened legs up to her chest in fits and starts of energy, making herself as small as possible in her circle. "Nothin' I do won' change the fact that he's dead, an' you hate me for it. You wish I was dead instead'a him. I know you do."

Maybe he did, Mitani thought, but that was none of the ghost's business. "This wasn't the first time he died, Shin," he said as though to reassure himself. "You must have figured it out by now. Izuru and I are shinigami. That's why we came after your brother. That's why we've come after you, to separate the dead from the living. To put everything in its proper place. And you have no place here. Not anymore."

"Don' you see, I don' wanna go with you! There's nothin' left for me but hell. Is there? Not after what I done."

"That's . . . something even I can't say."

"I killed them! What else can there be?"

Mitani faltered for words then, but only for a moment. With Izuru unable to hear him, unable to deny what he had to say, to denounce it just like he did those nights when they were alive, somehow the words found their own way to Mitani's tongue.

"I'm no better than you are, Shin. Maybe you won't believe me either. That's all right. But I know what I've done, I know that it was a terrible, terrible sin, and I don't know if I deserve forgiveness either; but I still choose to take comfort in the belief that there's someone up there who can forgive us our gravest sins—if we show our remorse for what we've done," he added quickly to Yuuko's raised eyes. "If we are willing to do penance. And if we genuinely want forgiveness."

"Yeah?" Yuuko choked. "An' what if you're wrong?"

"Then I'm wrong, and what will be will be. I will accept it. Eventually." But I have to believe there's an end to this pain—that somewhere, if I just perform the right steps, I'll be released from the guilt of my sins eventually. Even if it takes a thousand years. "But until then, I've got to believe there's hope even for someone like me."

The girl said nothing, just hugged her knees and whimpered quietly.

"You're afraid, Shin. That's okay. It's all right to be afraid."

"I don' care," the boy mumbled. "I don' care what you say. I ain' like you. I can' do that. I can' . . . I _won'_ leave her!"

Mitani could feel the boy's spirit straining once again against his concentration, and with it felt his hope shrinking minute by minute. He had thought himself so close to winning some sort of solution, and now he felt farther from the prize than ever. Izuru had abandoned him, and their ghost was as stubborn as ever—now on the defensive with fear. This wasn't working.

He just hoped to God Izuru had had a plan to go along with this damnfool idea, beyond getting himself killed. Because Mitani was running out of them.

—o—

The black current was stretched out below him again, as far as he could see, slowly snaking its way toward some distant shore, and Izuru could feel it rising to numb his pain. Cool his inflamed skin. And sap with it what remained of his will to fight.

The intangible waves embraced him, folded over him, covering his head, but they did not suffocate him. No, in order to do that, he would have to have been breathing first. He could feel no breath nor fluid entering his lungs. He could not even put forth the effort to breathe in. He felt nothing whatsoever, but a queer numbness that made him somehow aware of everything, a weightlessness that never felt so heavy or sluggish.

Am I dead?

He entertained the question for a few seconds before the answer came naturally to him. Izuru had no memory of his original death; it had either been taken from him by Enma or buried so far down in his subconscious he would never find it, let alone possess the strength of will to unlock that memory. He could not say if this felt at all like those long days his soul had spent in a forced hibernation, before Tsuzuki and Kurosaki found whatever hellhole the devil had banished him to.

Yet somehow he was able to say this was not it. Or else, it was a different kind of death. A death that separated him from the half-flesh of his shinigami body at the same time as it connected him to the current around him. He was helpless as a newborn, unable to move even a finger—unable to know if he even possessed fingers—yet the current responded to his will in his flesh's place, moving where he commanded it, breathing in and out around him. A part of him.

A few days ago, Izuru might have panicked at this revelation.

Now, he felt nothing but a reluctant acceptance. This was all that was left of the once proud devil Focalor. It had grown massive in the last three years, unchecked, but it had no power of its own. Like some blind and deaf beast, full to near bursting with destructive potential, yet impotent when it came to using it. If it had seemed eager to devour Izuru earlier, it was only the desire of a thing wishing to reunite with a part of itself that had been cut off for far too long. So long the pull of it was almost violent in compensation, like a riptide carrying him away.

It did not hurt him, however. It could not hurt him if it was a part of him.

Realizing that at last, Izuru let the current take him out like the tide, expanding the reach of his consciousness beyond the boundaries of his self. He felt the wind that rustled the tall grass that grew along the shore and the fronds of the palm trees, felt himself threading unharmed through the tentacles of anemones and microscopic venomous jellyfish—and the tiny pounding heart of the habu who had bitten him in the grass.

And there was something else. Like picking one bonito out of a school, or one star out of the sky, it was a chore to focus directly on it. But the more he tried, the clearer the nebulous shape materialized into something he could almost recognize.

"Yuuko."

The shape started at his voice. He needed no more proof than that. It was the girl's soul—taking on her features in fits and starts as he supplied his memory of her appearance over its shapelessness. Small, weakened and abused, and afraid—he could feel as much as his connection with her grew stronger. As well as her disorientation. She had no idea where she was or what had become of her, but gravitated toward the one presence that seemed to recognize her.

She was not dead, to Izuru's great relief. Her soul was not yet a free-floating object on the ether like those jellyfish, but tethered like some fan worm rooted to the ocean floor, albeit just barely.

Izuru was afraid to touch her lest he only damage what fragile connection remained between the girl's soul and her possessed body. Even as she reached out to him desperately—like an amoeba, like a neglected baby, hungry to connect with _anything_ remotely familiar—he hesitated, uncertain what consequences might result if he did reach back to secure her—unsure of this new set of physics, afraid a shinigami's touch like this might damn her to certain death.

And afraid that he might be doing the same thing if he hesitated much longer.

At the same time, a battle waged inside himself. Her soul, trembling so vulnerably, like a leaf about to fall from the tree . . . How easy it would be to pluck it for himself. All he had to do was reach out and take the hand she extended toward him, enfold her in his embrace, and she would never know the difference even as she slipped into oblivion. He could already feel the heat of her inside himself, tiny and diminished but full of a purity and a living essence he only discovered now how much he missed, how much he _craved_. . . .

—o—

A grunt of pain startled Mitani from his meditation.

The possible solutions to the problem at hand that he had been running through in his mind were quickly forgotten. He looked up to see Yuuko bent over in her circle in agony, holding both hands over her ears, pushing at her temples with the heels of her palms. The internal pain must have been so intense, breaking the tension of his restraining spell in order to do so was worth the small relief it provided. A low whine escaped her, like a tea kettle just beginning to boil.

"Yuuko—" Mitani caught himself. "Shin! What's wrong?"

He moved to get up so that he might closer examine the girl, but her words stopped him dead. "Make 'im stop!" she wailed, clutching her head. "It hurts, it _hu-u-urts! Get it outta my head!_"

Yuuko. . . . That was the girl speaking. It had to be her, fighting back against the invading spirit. Mitani was so sure of it, he was prepared to break his charm in the next heartbeat, until a growl escaped the girl and she turned feral eyes up to him. There was no change after all; Shinkichi was still in complete control.

"_No!_ This is _my_ body! I won' give it t' you devils! I won' let her have it back, I won' let you!"

The wind picked up suddenly, blowing hard off the ocean and kicking up the dust and loose gravel in the grass around them; and it made the girl scream. "Sensei!" she pleaded with Mitani, and for a moment he almost forgot he was really talking to the boy's ghost—a manipulative ghost at that, who had heard Izuru call him by that title more than once tonight. "Sens— . . . Ah! _Make 'im sto-o-op!_"

"Izuru."

Ignoring the girl and the ghost struggling within her, Mitani looked down at the young man resting against his legs. The sweat on his forehead had dried, but otherwise there was no change discernible in his features in the halflight. He still lay as still as death. But the wind off the water was unusually warm and full with an overwhelming scent of brine, and the faint sweetness of decay.

"Stop it, Izuru," Mitani found himself whispering beneath the screaming of Shinkichi's ghost. He didn't dare touch his partner, as though suddenly he did not know him. "Whatever you're doing . . . please. . . ." Izuru knew what it was like to be possessed himself. How could he conscionably do this? "If there wasn't enough room for two souls in there, what makes you think it would be wise to add another?"

Shin's screaming abruptly stopped as the girl doubled over and let her forehead fall on the dirt in front of her. A moan of relief told Mitani the girl was momentarily free of that wracking pain, despite the drama.

"Yuuko's safe, for now," Izuru said as he pushed himself upright and off of Mitani.

Who could only stare in disbelief at him as the young man hoisted himself to his feet with little more than a huff. Only moments before there had been no breath, no pulse in him, and now—

I wasn't sure I'd ever talk to him again—Mitani thought, clenching his jaw against the wave of emotions that rose automatically within him—and he acts like this?

"She's weakened, she can't fight back against him anymore, but she'll hold on if I have anything to do with it—"

"Izuru. . . ."

The young man started at the hand that clasped around his wrist and tightened. Mitani's eyes burned, his throat was tight, but nothing came up out of him. Still, he could hardly bear to meet his former student's eyes, and see that casual, perplexed look in them, as though he honestly could not understand how difficult this was for Mitani.

Instead, Mitani turned the other's wrist in his grip. Almost an hour had passed since Izuru's collapse, and yet it was still nearly impossible for Mitani to believe his eyes when there was nothing but smooth skin to meet them.

He looked up and met Izuru's eyes. "You possessed her. Yuuko."

He couldn't tell if Izuru's hesitation indicated guilt or regret. "I didn't."

But he could have, was the unspoken truth left hanging between them.

"You . . . You're supposed t' be dead!"

At the girl's remark, Izuru pulled himself free of Mitani's grasp. The former teacher rose from his place, but was not quick enough to stop his partner from closing the distance between himself and Yuuko.

Izuru grabbed her arm, jerking her roughly to her feet even as her legs threatened to collapse beneath her weight, and scattered the nearest portion of the circle with the toe of his shoe.

Immediately, the light that had illuminated their patch of ground like a campfire extinguished itself, and Shinkichi gasped as the legs of his body tentatively regained their feeling. With it, he regained the urge to flee, but a little too late. Izuru tugged the girl back, and swatted her across the cheek.

"What are you doing?" Mitani asked him in disbelief.

But one thing to be said for his actions, it stunned the girl and Shin, and ensured Izuru had the boy's undivided attention as he continued to hold the girl by the collar of her T-shirt.

"Now you're gonna listen to me, Oshiro Shinkichi!" Izuru told them. "I'm dead now, just like you. We're even."

The girl tried to back away. "You . . . you ain' dead. You ain' _human!_"

Izuru smiled bitterly. "No, I'm not. I'm much more than that. I have power over life and death—not unlike yourself, right, Shin? But unlike you, I don't need some innocent person's body to do my killing for me. I don't even need weapons."

The winds whipped down over them again, blowing hard through the threesome's hair and clothes, threatening to knock Yuuko with her weakened body off her feet. Among the three of them, only Izuru seemed untouched by the force of it. He raised his free hand, the other tightening on the back of her T-shirt collar, so that Shinkichi might see how with a flick of his wrist the gale doubled back upon itself to surround them.

"Unlike you," he told Shin, and Mitani didn't like his smile as he did so, "I can take life with a touch."

"That's enough, Izuru!"

The young man did not even look away from the girl, but Mitani knew Izuru heard him. Slowly—too slowly for his liking—the wind died down to something less violent, something less . . . unnatural. However, there was a vague maliciousness in Izuru's eyes that took a little longer to fade. Then again, perhaps Mitani had merely imagined it—an illusion cast by the darkening shadows of night.

But for a moment he had been certain he saw a return of that devilish gleam the boy had had the night he died, or worse. As though a part of him actually enjoyed the girl's terrified squirming in his grasp.

Then Izuru blinked, and it was gone—if it had ever truly been there to begin with.

"Just what are you trying to accomplish?" Mitani asked him, raising his voice above the rustling of the tall grass in the wind. "You'll only make the boy's hold on her body that much tighter scaring him like that! And the tighter he holds, the faster he'll push Yuuko out of her own body!"

"I could have pulled him out," Izuru said through gritted teeth, "if I had been sure it wouldn't have hurt the girl. I had him. . . ."

That time, Mitani recognized the anger Izuru aimed at himself, even if his gaze never wavered from the girl.

He could not say the same for Shinkichi, but the girl turned her wide eyes to the young man, breaths coming fast like those of a small, frightened animal.

"I terrify you, don't I, Shin? Not because I came back from the dead. He's dead," Izuru said, with a nod over his shoulder at Mitani, "and he doesn't scare you like I do."

"'Cause he ain' a devil like you!" Shin all but sobbed.

Izuru nodded slowly. The anger seemed to evaporate from him, even if the wind remained.

"That's right. And you don't want to become one yourself, do you, Shin?" The girl shook her head, but, unsatisfied, Izuru thrust his open hand palm first before her face, shaking Yuuko when Shin recoiled at the sight of his ring-like scars. "_Is this what you want to turn into, Shin?_"

"N-no. . . ."

"Then leave her body and come with us to Meifu."

When Shin hesitated, Yuuko looking down at her feet, Izuru lowered his voice. It sounded to Mitani like the rush of the tide, seductive and threatening at the same time.

"If you don't," Izuru told the boy's soul, "you'll only end up like me. You're afraid of what will happen to your soul after what you've done, you don't want to fade into oblivion—that's normal. But don't you think there could be something worse than even that, Shin? Huh? Don't you think fifty-six years of this nonsense has been enough, or are you really such a sad, selfish little child after all that time? If Yuuko dies on account of you, if her soul returns with us to Meifu instead of yours . . ."

Though he left them unspoken, the consequences he threatened, once allowed to seep into the boy's psyche, were more effective than any outright threat.

However. . . . "I can'." Yuuko's voice was little more than a whisper, a breath, brimming with the tears Shinkichi could not express himself. "Even if I knew how—"

"But you _do_ know, Shin, don't give me that crap."

"_But I killed them!_ Wha's gonna happen t' me 'cause of that? Wha're they gonna do t' me?"

"Does it matter?" Izuru said, his tone hard, relentless. "Do you see an alternative that isn't worse than what you'll have to face already? Sure, you can run, but that'll only put off the inevitable, and your punishment when it comes—and it will, 'cause we will catch you—it'll only be worse. The kind of people Enma will sic after you then won't be half as nice as us."

At those words, for the first time, the fight appeared to leave Yuuko's body. Mitani merely stared, at a loss for words, not understanding how Izuru managed to accomplish what he could not with kinder words, and not caring to. He hesitated to step toward them, to speak, fearing one wrong turn of phrase might break whatever spell under which his partner seemed to have the boy's spirit.

When Shinkichi spoke again, Yuuko's voice was small and as haggard as her appearance. "If . . . _if_ I agree t' go with you, will I see my brother again?" Shin asked Izuru, eyes flickering briefly to Mitani and back again.

Izuru did not lie to him, nor did he sugarcoat his reply. "I don't know," he said bluntly, without any sympathy in his voice or gaze. "All I can guarantee is that if you keep this up, you will _never_ see him again—or anyone else you ever knew or loved. Enma will see to that."

The girl did not reply for a long moment, Shinkichi's turmoil clear on her face as she chewed the inside of her cheek and avoided Izuru's gaze.

Mitani was not aware he had been holding his breath until, with a long, low whine, Yuuko dropped to her knees.

Her shirt still clutched in his hand, Izuru knelt along with her, even as she fell to her hands and grasped at the earth beneath her, whispering Eiki's name over and over as though in a plea to God. His former student never resembled those portraits of the angels so much in Mitani's eyes as he did at that moment, staring down his nose at Yuuko with cold, unblinking, but patient and methodical eyes that chilled Mitani inside. Even as this new tactic of Izuru's that he so loathed in his gut brought forth the results that had evaded Mitani all evening.

Shinkichi blinked up at them from within the girl's eyes. "All right," he managed, each word, each syllable paining him to form, to submit. "I'll do it. I'll go with you. Jus' please . . . let that be the end of it."

At last, as though it had been ages since he'd last done so, Izuru closed his eyes; and though he made no sound, Mitani could feel his partner's silent sigh of relief as though it were his own.

Relief, too, that the Izuru who answered Shinkichi finally sounded familiar.

"I promise you," he said. "It may be the one decision you don't regret."

—o—

From his perch atop one of the boulders that dotted the hillside, safe in his mongoose guise, the demon who had borrowed the body of the man in the Hawaiian shirt watched.

He watched as the shinigami coaxed the possessing spirit from the little girl, as the girl fell limp into the man's arms, and as a young boy's ghost materialized nebulously before them, like the after image on the back of one's eyelids.

His body in this form may not have allowed him to properly show it, but the demon grinned in satisfaction at this. His brothers had doubted him—even the boy himself had denied what he knew to be true, to say nothing of his ignorant partner—but now there was nothing left to doubt. The demon recognized his Master clearly in the boy now, even if He was disguised behind the fair, adolescent face. Even if His power was at the mercy of a human turned shinigami.

The nuances mattered little. His essence had survived, and that news was more than enough for the demon to take with pride back to his home. He was prepared to serve even that boy if necessary, and he knew there were others who felt the same. Not as many as there once were, perhaps, but enough. There was still a chance they might yet accomplish what Focalor had failed to do.

The thought made him bare his jagged teeth in what looked like nothing more innocent than a yawn, and his goat-like eyes narrowed in pleasure, relishing the anticipation of that day of victory.

—o—

Yuuko was still unconscious when they reached her hotel room—asleep but breathing fine, her pulse strong and only growing stronger. It was late, and no one noticed a couple of shinigami sneak inside the fifth floor room with the girl in Mitani's arms.

They shimmied the sliding door open, and left her to her slumber on the room's davenport for her parents to find in the morning. No doubt they would have questions about how she came to be there, but those could wait.

More than anything, what the girl needed was rest. To say the last few days had been taxing on her system was a gross understatement; and both hoped that when she did wake, Shinkichi's possession and all he had made her do would seem like nothing more than a bad dream at worst. Her bloodied shirt might pose a problem, but that matter was out of Meifu's jurisdiction. No matter how much Izuru cursed Yuuko's stupidity in inviting Shinkichi in, her eight-year-old ignorance, no one, let alone he, could blame her for what her body had committed without her knowledge or consent. The boy's soul, on its way to Meifu, would not be spared the judgement he had coming for his sins; but on that front, at least, the shinigami were content to know their part in delivering him after over half a century was over and done.

The evening air was cool after the stifling humidity of the day, and Izuru paused on the hotel room balcony to let the breeze hit his face, cleanse him of the trials of that evening.

He sighed, saying after a while, "I guess we should head back to our hotel and try to get some sleep, since it's too late to check out. . . ."

Izuru trailed off when he noticed Mitani's silence beside him, and looked over. His former teacher had his hand raised to his mouth like he was going to be sick. It was instinctive to ask, "Are you all right, Sensei?"

But that wasn't right. He wasn't ill. Izuru knitted his brows. "Are you _crying_—"

"How can you act this way?"

Mitani's voice was little more than a whisper through his fingers, as though any louder and he might lose it completely, and Izuru was surprised to discover how much it unnerved him. To see his former teacher, his rock, the man he always looked up to, quietly, almost imperceptibly breaking down into himself—after he had carried the girl here in his arms with no trouble at all, showing no sign anything was bothering him, even smiling at one point along the way. . . .

Izuru wasn't sure why it should anger him, but it did.

"Act what way?"

"Like . . . _this_. Like what happened back there on the beach meant nothing."

Izuru forced a laugh his heart was not in. "You're still on that? What's the big deal, Sensei? I died, and I was resurrected."

The words sounded callous to Izuru's own ears, but he was not expecting Mitani to hiss at him through gritted teeth, "Don't say that!"

"Why? Because it's blasphemous?" Izuru's patience had run out, no bite left in him even for sarcasm. "I don't care! We're already dead, Sensei. Nothing we do is ever going to bring us back to life, and frankly I don't think there's anything we can do to change where we are now. Do you honestly think Enma would just let my soul get away from him before I've paid my dues?"

"Not _intentionally_. But what if that stunt of yours ended worse than it did, huh?" Mitani put a hand on his shoulder, forcing Izuru to face him, when the boy threatened to look away. "What if you hadn't come back?"

The corners of Mitani's lips curled back as a new thought occurred to him—whether with disgust or disbelief, Izuru could not tell.

"Were you trying to escape me?"

Normally, a person's first instinct would be to deny an accusation like that, Izuru thought. But instead, he found himself saying nothing.

Then it was Mitani's turn to force a laugh. He groaned. "Of course. . . ."

"It wasn't like that—"

"Then what was it like, Izuru? My God . . . I'm sick of this. I can't stand this thing between us any more. You told me once, when we were alive, that you loved me, and I didn't want to believe you. I didn't want to admit that maybe I felt the same way. That scared me. It scared me to think of what it meant, what a sin it was and how it could feel so right, and I didn't feel like there was any way I could ever deserve it—not from you. Not given what I did to you."

"But I wanted you to do it to me."

"Did you?" Mitani shut his eyes tight, but even that wasn't enough to evade Izuru's gaze. He shook his head. "I wanted to believe that. Really, Izuru, I've wanted that to be true from the beginning, but now I can't help wondering if it ever meant anything at all. Back then. . . ." He growled, as though the words themselves pained him: "Was it just the devil inside you saying those things all along?"

"No." His accusation hit Izuru like a physical blow. He could feel them in his gut, making it hard to draw a breath—he could hardly believe he was hearing that from this man. Not now. Not after everything. "Sensei . . . h-how could you say—"

"Because, frankly, I don't understand how you could love me like that, make me love you—know _how much I loved you back_, and then go and take it all away. Take yourself away from me—take your own life in front of me. _Twice_. . . ."

His lowered voice had been so full with the intensity of his emotions, when Mitani stopped, it took Izuru a moment to understand it was because his former teacher was trying his hardest to maintain his control. A single tear glistened against his cheek in the night lights, but his eyes remained hidden from Izuru behind his hair. Then his fingers, as he pressed them to his forehead. It was hard enough for him to allow his former student to see him like this that Izuru did not know what to say.

"I don't understand how you can do that to the person you love," Mitani choked. "And I can't help wondering if you were trying to hurt me all along."

"I'd never—" Izuru floundered, feeling himself flush. The accusation stung. "It had nothing to do with you. I wasn't thinking—"

"You're right. You weren't thinking. And that's just the problem! Don't you get it? What if you hadn't come back?"

"But I _did!_"

"That's not the point." Mitani sighed and shook his head; but it was the pain in his eyes when he looked up and met Izuru's, the anguish in his smile that wasn't really a smile that made any sort of retort or excuse die on the boy's lips.

"I would have understood if you just told me about your abilities. It might have taken me some time, but I'd try. You should know me well enough by now to know that. Izuru, how can we make this work if you can't trust me enough to tell me one little thing—and I can't even trust that one day you just won't be there? Because you really have no idea what it does to me, to lose you like that. To watch you die and see you in pain like that and know I can't do anything—to know it's possible I might never get you back. Wondering if . . ." He lowered his voice. "If the words I said to you might be the last, and that I'd never get another chance—"

It was Izuru who had to turn away this time. He must have known—he wasn't empathic or anything, but he must have at least guessed, had the knowledge in the back of his mind, that his death would hurt Mitani. Then how come it never even slowed me down? His inability to come up with an answer shamed him to further silence; the words "I'm sorry" didn't sound nearly as strong as Mitani deserved. So Izuru ended up saying nothing, even knowing in doing so he could only end up hurting Mitani more than he already had.

With a sigh, his former teacher gave up, and released Izuru to lean on the banister, looking out over the city—leaving the boy to stand like a statue, unsure of what to do or say next. Unsure whether he should comfort Mitani, apologize, reassure him—lie to him—or if that would only make things worse.

"Izuru," Mitani said slowly when there was no answer. "There's something I've been meaning to ask you, but it . . . it really isn't easy for me."

Izuru glanced at him warily, knowing he wasn't going to like this, but knowing there was nothing he could do to get out of facing it either. He had faced so many difficult truths tonight already, what was one more?

"There's just this one question I've been asking myself all this time," Mitani said out toward the city, "all these years since we met. And maybe I don't want to know the answer, but I have to ask . . ." He drew in a shaky breath. "Why me? Why did you choose me?"

Izuru did not know what he was expecting to hear, but that was not it. He just said, "I don't know," and turned stubbornly back to the view.

He was never very good at lying to Mitani, and both of them knew it.

"Tell me, please," Mitani said, his voice low and intense as he stared at the boy over his shoulder. "You can't keep avoiding the truth forever, Izuru."

"You won't like the truth."

"I don't care. I still have to know it." Mitani turned and leaned back against the balcony railing, and it almost seemed to Izuru as though his old professor were barring his exit—out of their cramped space, and out of this question. "I have to know why you picked _me_ to do this to."

"I don't know, Sensei! What do you want me to say?" Izuru threw his hands up in defeat. Remembering the hotel room at his back, he lowered his voice, but it didn't quiet the turmoil inside him one bit. "Because I could. All right? It was all just a game I thought I could play, because I was bored, and horny, and you were _there_, and I didn't want Fujisawa to beat me at even one thing. Because I hated you and admired you for being so pious and so full of the faith I never had, I thought, maybe if I could bring you down, prove you were no better than me, make you do something so bad—if I could expose you for just being one more sinner then maybe all my doubts would be justified, that there's not some god up there who loves us all just the way we are, and forgives us, that all this bullshit in the world is just that, and I never had to care—and you were never supposed to either. But you were young and beautiful and _so goddamn nice_. . . ."

The truth of his words hit home then, all the memories flooding back, and for the first time since he could remember he actually _mourned_ them. All the lost opportunities, the things he hadn't said right—everything that was good, that he went and ruined, but, God, how good it had been, just for that little while. Christ, how strongly he had felt all those things he admitted to Mitani, once upon a time, and what a fool he had been when the only thing that should have mattered. . . .

He just threw it away.

"You were so kind to me," he said, choking on the words as sudden tears blurred his vision. "You didn't see me for what I was supposed to be, like everyone else did. Do you even know what that was like? Do you know what that did to me? Nothing else I ever did, none of those things everyone else saw as great accomplishments mattered a bit to me next to that. You were . . ."

He cut himself off, unable to continue. Unable to say those two words: my everything. His pride still wouldn't let him say that, perhaps because of just how true it was. Not to Mitani's face, not when his gentle eyes—those eyes it hurt so much to look at sometimes, Izuru was glad for his long hair—were staring back at him like the eyes of some painting of Christ.

Full of all that love the likes of Izuru didn't deserve, and wishing anyone, anyone else at all, could take his place.

Izuru had to force himself to look away. "Say something." His voice sounded tiny and awkward to his own ears. "Anything."

"I don't know what to say," Mitani said.

His tone of voice didn't say anything either, nothing Izuru could read some meaning from. Nothing that would give him some indication of where he now stood. God, if there was ever a time he actually wanted Mitani to give him the honest truth, it was now. "You must hate me—"

"No. Never. I'm just finding it extremely hard to forgive you."

Izuru squeezed his eyes tight. He wasn't sure which was worse.

"I'm not the kind of person you think I am, Sensei," he said. "Those terrible things I said . . . I meant them. At one point."

Mitani managed a small, pained smile. "I know. I guess I just don't understand how you could do that to me, Izuru. I already lost you once. Did you really need to make me watch you die all over again, when you knew just how difficult it would be for me? You must have known how bad it would hurt me, and you still did it."

A tremor in Mitani's voice as he gently stroked the boy's jaw forced Izuru to look at him again. He was trembling something awful; Izuru could feel it through his touch, light and tentative though it was. When he looked down, Mitani seemed to notice for the first time, and let his hand fall heavy on the junction of Izuru's neck and shoulder. Izuru needed no extra insight to know what his old professor was thinking, how hard he was trying to bury the memory of watching Izuru's body fail him before his eyes, and how sorely he was losing that battle with himself.

"There must have been some other way," Mitani said. "Some other way to convince the boy's spirit. Why did you have to go and do _that_, and make me relive that night? Losing you the first time was the worst thing that ever happened to me, and for you to so casually . . ."

A shiver ran through him and Izuru couldn't stand it anymore. He took Mitani's wrist in both his hands; but even that wasn't enough. It wasn't enough when he wrapped both arms around Mitani's waist, beneath his trembling arms, and pressed his face into his old professor's chest, but it hid his tears, flowing freely now. They would ruin Mitani's tie, but those things never mattered to Izuru. He just couldn't bear seeing Mitani like that any longer, couldn't bear that he, Izuru, had been the one to blame for all that guilt and agony he saw in his teacher's face.

"I'm not going anywhere," he murmured into Mitani's shirt. "I promise. I won't leave you anymore. Okay, Sensei? So you can stop being afraid that I will. All right? You've gotta believe me, I never meant to hurt you like that. I'd take it all back if I could, just to make things right between us. I swear."

He felt Mitani's fingertips dig into his shoulder, the man's lips on his crown, breath through his hair, and just wondered, heart hammering, if Mitani could feel his lie.

"I won't do that to you ever again."


	8. Absolution

"Let me see if I understand you right, Okazaki. You wish to be assigned a different partner, and you want your current partner transferred to a different division?"

"No, sir. When I said 'move on,' I didn't mean within the system. I want him to be released from his sentence. I want his soul to find peace. In Heaven, or rebirth, or oblivion—whatever. Anywhere but here."

Izuru could not see the Count's eyes let alone any of his person behind his jagged half mask, but he could feel the man's gaze on him—boring holes into him, trying to read his true intentions. As if Izuru needed to explain them any plainer than he already had.

He kept himself in close check beneath that gaze, determined to give nothing more away than he had intended when he came here. He had already made his decision. In fact, it had lain like a dark presence in the back of his mind since the day he woke to find himself here, in this world, but until now he had been too afraid to allow himself to consider the possibility seriously for any length of time. Afraid that he might lose Mitani as soon as he won him back. That he would be alone in his place, in this existence, and everything that he had died for would have been in vain.

None of that mattered now. He was still terrified, sure, but that wasn't what was important.

"I can't stand to see him punished like this for _my_ sins," Izuru told the Count, staring into the empty space where he knew the man's eyes to be. "He's good at what he does, but it's painful for him—having to take other people's lives, watch them suffer. I can see that. And I know _I_ deserve to feel that way for what I did, but it isn't fair to him. So, I'm prepared to strike a deal if it will have Sensei's sentence reduced."

"Strike a deal? With whom? Surely you know the decision to make your partner a shinigami came from Enma, not me."

"Then I'll bargain with Enma. He can keep me here as long as he likes," Izuru said quickly when the other sighed his exasperation. "He can use me however he wants. I'll do anything. I don't care anymore."

"You'd sacrifice your own autonomy for your partner—your own shot at paradise, your eternal soul?"

When the Count phrased it that way, Izuru wavered momentarily in doubt. But he had to remain strong in his conviction, "This isn't about my happiness. It's about Mitani-sensei's."

"But you do understand what you're offering to give up. And you really don't care? Enma could make your existence miserable. If you think being a shinigami is already a living hell, then you really have no idea to what you're opening yourself."

"But I could be of great use to him, if he would agree to my terms. I have a power he never intended me to have when he made me shinigami. It's his choice, whether I use it to pursue his interests or . . . Well, I've learned there are other parties who would be all too happy to have me on their side."

If Izuru had been expecting the Count to be at all intimidated by his threat, he was to be disappointed. The man shook his head slowly, with a weariness and a patience that were years, eons beyond Izuru's experience.

"Dear boy," he said lowly, "I'll write off what you've just said as a product of youth's recklessness and inexperience, because you really have no idea what you're talking about."

Izuru felt his face flush at that. "Of course I do! They didn't know when they assigned me to this job—"

"About your powers? The ones the devil left behind on your soul when he possessed you?"

Izuru started despite his best efforts, and took half a step back before he remembered his promise to himself to remain unmoved. "Then, you knew." But the Count couldn't have read his mind. Nor did it seem likely he had been tailed on his and Mitani's last assignment. . . .

His surprise did not go unnoticed.

"We've been preparing ourselves for this development since your arrival in Juuohcho," said the Count. "Lord Enma has always been aware of the possibility some of Focalor's essence had been transferred to you. We couldn't be sure how long it would take for it to develop, or if it ever would, and I do admit I started to have my doubts when Chief Konoe informed me of your lack of progress over these past few years. From what I knew from your file, however, I began to suspect the only reason you would allow yourself to remain at such an elementary level was that you were doing your utmost to deny something you knew, if only even subconsciously, to be inside yourself—something unpleasant, something you were afraid to face head-on—even to the point of going against your own pride and squeaking by with the bare minimum amount of effort—"

"I'm an excellent shinigami," Izuru snapped, out of that same pride the Count spoke of. "My track record should speak to that."

"Your measly three-year track record?" the Count said, not without a twinge of sarcasm Izuru resented even as he knew he deserved it. "You do know how long Tsuzuki has been working for us, and have you ever heard him boast about his powers, his unparalleled accomplishments? At least he understands that they're nothing to take pride in—that the only reason he has been allowed to reap the benefits of his talents is because of the severity of his transgressions in life. And he recognizes that King Enma could and will undo it all on a whim if he takes so much as a step outside his boundaries, while you, whose time here has been like a drop in the bucket compared to his service, have the audacity to think you can threaten this establishment with powers you don't even understand yet?"

The Count's words struck Izuru speechless, but his fists tightened at his sides. Not for the first time he cursed how weak he was, that he was unable to affect anything around him that really mattered. In this realm of demons and immortals, he hadn't nearly the strength nor the reckless courage to back up his threats with serious action, and his arguments, no matter how well he tried to express what he felt with all his person deep inside, were nothing more than intangible words, and clumsy ones at that. How simple things had been when he was alive in comparison, and how inconsequential everything he had accomplished.

"I told you," he said, lowering his eyes and gritting his teeth. "I'm only doing this for Sensei."

"Which is a very selfless gesture of you, Okazaki," the Count said, his tone also softening. "If, in fact, it's true. However, I can't help thinking it is also incredibly selfish."

"How do you mean? You think I'm lying?"

"What I mean is, is it really Mitani's happiness you're after, Okazaki, or your own?"

His accusation awakened something deep inside Izuru, something even he wanted to shut away forever, and he felt his anger rise instinctively. "How can you say that after everything I've just told you? His happiness, of course! Do you really think I would willingly put myself through losing him if I were only thinking of myself? You think I would ask you to take him away from me when he's the only thing I have left that brings any meaning to this existence? How in God's name would that make _me_ happy?"

"Because you know how much easier your life would be if you did not have to face him every morning—if you did not have to be afraid that when you looked him in the eye or chose your words you would be reminded of your past sins all over again." Everything he said cut Izuru to the core, even if the young man refused to show it, as though he knew precisely where each of Izuru's insecurities lay, and just how hard to twist the knife. And still he continued. "You've convinced yourself that if Mitani were no longer there, this existence of yours would at least be bearable, because even if your happiness went away with him, so would the pain. But you're sorely deluded if you think that pain will ever go away, Okazaki."

"So what if it doesn't? I can face it. You're right: I'm terrified to think of losing him. It frightens me more than anything I could dream of, but I'm prepared to face that. I'll face anything—devils, these powers—Enma himself, even—if it means an end to Sensei's pain."

Akamine had spoken to him of saints, and now Izuru felt he understood what she meant. I'd stay here a hundred years if I had to, a thousand even, if I knew it would guarantee Sensei's happiness. If it meant he would no longer have to suffer this existence on account of me—all because of what I did to him, and the stupid mistakes I made, and because of what I _am_. . . .

"Please." It pained Izuru to beg, as it had always felt like the gesture was so far beneath him, but he had nothing left on which to fall back. No secrets to hang over the Count's head, not even his own pride. All his cards were on the table, and for all he had dressed his best for this occasion, he might as well have stood naked under the Count's invisible gaze for all he had left to hide. "If only to protect him from me. You've got to understand I would do anything. There's really nothing else I can say."

"Then there's nothing I can tell you either but the plain and simple truth. And that is that what you ask will never happen."

Like the proverbial ton of bricks, the Count's words fell upon Izuru. Although, if he were honest with himself, had he really come here expecting to get what he asked for?

"I'll be frank with you, Okazaki. I understand how you feel. Trust me when I say I know the feeling exactly. But you think you'd be helping your partner by sacrificing yourself, by giving him a free pass from his penance, when in fact you are not helping him at all. Take that attitude too far, and it will take both of you down with it. And you'd do well to remember how selfish it is of you, this notion you seem to have that Mitani was put here for no other reason than to make your existence hell.

"He was made a shinigami," the Count reminded Izuru, "not to torture you, but because there are sins he committed that Enma feels he should have to pay for with his service. I don't have to remind you what those are. I know you know them, even if you choose to forget. But Mitani will not. Just like you, he'll wake up each day having to face the monsters inside himself, and no one can do that for him but himself. There are no shortcuts anyone else can give him. It is up to Mitani to decide when he has paid his debt, not you. No matter how easy you may find it to forgive him."

"No one can judge another's soul but God," Izuru heard himself say to no one in particular, more out of force of habit than anything else.

"In a manner of speaking. Mitani will know when he has served his time, and Enma will decide if he is fit to receive his reward."

If that were the case, Izuru thought, then they would be in for a great many more years to come, because his old professor was not one to easily let go of his own guilt. He only wondered how much more of their shared company the two of them could survive—how long it would be before their respective guilt forced them apart like it had some of their coworkers, and made what semblance of lives they had here more painful than they already were.

But only if they let it come to that, a small but strong voice within Izuru reminded him.

The Count was right about one thing: Izuru had had years to come to terms with his own sins—long enough to understand what his purpose was here, to loathe himself for it, and to perfect it. But of Mitani's sins, he had not given more than a passing thought. The only person I killed was myself—unless I count my complicity in what the devil did to Sensei. But I made him a murderer—

The reality of that was still something Izuru could not fathom, though it was a part of Mitani's history known at least vaguely to more than a few of their coworkers. Izuru knew about the priest, about Fujisawa—about the relationship between his former teacher and Fujisawa—and still he could not grasp that the Mitani he knew was responsible. That that person had somehow betrayed Izuru and the God in which he professed such stubborn belief.

It recalled for Izuru a conversation he had had with Kurosaki not long ago, that he had been eager to put behind him, if not forget completely, when Kurosaki had confided in him that he did not understand what Izuru saw in Mitani worth such devotion, let alone killing himself over.

"When I met him at Saint Michel," the other boy had said, "he just made me uneasy, the way he looked at me—or rather, tried not to—like he was hiding something twisted inside. Something he was afraid he was going to lose his control over. You know, something predatory."

Then, however, he had sighed, and shrugged his shoulders, and said, "Then again, maybe it's not my place to judge. Tsuzuki likes him, and you obviously think highly of him, but I guess maybe I've just never been able to get over that initial impression enough to want to see it. I've already seen into the psyches of enough of those types to last me several lifetimes."

He was wrong, Izuru had wanted to say then. What Mitani felt about himself, what Kurosaki had picked up from him—it had been nothing but a human reaction to and a healthy fear of the darkness that lies inside all men.

Now, however, he was beginning to understand that the likes of himself and his old professor, and the characters who surrounded them in this world, were much more the exception than the rule. Otherwise, their souls would have found some other resting place when they passed.

We're all monsters, he thought. Me, Sensei, Tsuzuki and Kurosaki. . . . That's why we ended up here. That's how we got this sentence—why we're being punished for the sins we committed, willingly or unwittingly, by taking the lives of others as shinigami. This is no penance, no purgatory. We're not shaving off karma. We're piling it on in leaps and bounds, with the blessing of God or whatever it is that's actually out there, until we finally cave so pathetically under the weight Enma finally takes pity on us. Or we simply run out of usefulness to him.

In a place like this, there can be no forgiveness.

And that truth was the hardest of all of them to accept.

"At least Sensei's still human," Izuru mused aloud. It was one thing he could take consolation in at this point. "But what will happen to me now? I mean, if what you say is true, and Enma's known about me all along. Now that I've confirmed his suspicions, now that he knows something of Focalor is still alive in me. . . ." Will he take Sensei away from me regardless? "Am I going to be punished?"

The Count regarded him curiously. "Do you think you deserve to be punished for what happened between you and the devil, Okazaki?"

"Well, for making that pact in the first place, yes. Of course. But other than that . . ."

Izuru trailed off as he found he did not have a ready answer.

"In my mind's eye," he confessed to the Count after several moments had passed in awkward silence, "I saw the girl, Yuuko's, soul. It was like I was floating between planes, and I saw her essence just hanging there in space, so small but at the same time so strong, I wanted to swallow it up. I felt the devil then—like I hadn't since that night I died, I felt his influence like he was still in my mind. I don't know how else to describe it. Like . . . I just knew if I did that, if I . . ." The word made him shiver. "_Consumed_ her, it would satisfy this terrible hunger I didn't even know I had."

"But you resisted that urge."

Izuru swallowed. Ashamed and unable to meet the Count's gaze, he looked down.

"Yes. But only just. That's what it feels like. I could have—I wanted to—but for some reason—and maybe I don't want to know the reason—but I didn't do it."

"_Because you knew it was wrong_, Okazaki. Don't you see? That means you're still in control! The devil can't have authority over you if you do not let him."

Izuru snapped his head up. "But what if I did! I can't stop thinking about how easy it would have been to give in."

"Then you'll never be free of his influence." The Count's voice sounded almost pitying to Izuru, and his ears burned in shame again that the other had to tell him what he already knew—just was too stubborn to believe. "You expect us to fix what's wrong with you here, Okazaki, when the only one who can do that is yourself. You can't expect Enma to take action until you pose a threat to his authority, and that is inviting trouble that likes of which I would wish on no one. Take control of this—don't run from it but learn to master it rather than letting it master you, and use it for what you as a shinigami—as a human being know is right. Really, boy, you're quick enough you don't need me to tell you what should be obvious."

Not for the first time that day, the Count's words stung with their accuracy. What had Izuru honestly been expecting to gain in coming to him? Condemnation? Not hope, surely.

Or had he been foolish enough to believe he might find something in the Count's words to antagonize him to action? Because if he needed something to set himself against in order to find a reason to be, a justification for everything he was and all he had done wrong, and every reason why he and Mitani should be separated when everything in his person cried out for anything _but_ that . . .

Then he had fallen a lot farther than he thought.

The Count's voice shook him physically back from that dark place within himself.

"You want my advice, Okazaki," he said, "it's this: Hold on to what you have, while you still have that luxury. Treasure every day you have with the one you sacrificed your life for."

"Even though every one of those days brings both of us nothing but pain?"

"Yes," the Count said firmly. "Because if you do not have that, you have nothing left."

—o—

It was just as she was wrapping up her speech that Mrs Itosu spotted the two young men at the back of crowd, just inside the shade of the tent. The host of the ceasefire commemoration event called for a short break so that those gathered might stretch their limbs and mingle, and she used the opportunity to weave through the attendees pressing her with thankful words and handshakes toward the two.

Mitani found her before she found them.

"Quite a turnout," he said, materializing before her from out of the crowd.

She nodded. "I only wish the rest of our little club could be here to see it. What happened to them, no one should have to experience, and I still regret I couldn't do anything about it."

"There was nothing you could do."

"No. And maybe that's just as bad, but I suppose I'll learn to accept it. I pray for their souls every day, Mr Mitani. But I take it you're not here to bring more bad news."

Mitani allowed himself a bashful smile as they made their way to the fringes of the event, so that no one else might hear what he had to say. "You probably know by now the missing eight-year-old girl from last week was returned safely to her family."

"Yes, I heard about that. Very good news, that. Though they said they weren't sure how she ended up back at her hotel room without anyone seeing her come in. Needless to say, I was more worried when you and your young friend didn't show again—"

"Yeah, I wanted to apologize for that. But as you can see, we're just fine now."

Her piercing gaze seemed to see right through him, but he would not give her the benefit of an answer to the question that was so clear in it.

"Mr Mitani," she said, putting a hand on her hip, though her smile remained cordial, "you and your friend aren't freelance investigators, are you? Just like you're not reporters." She narrowed her eyes. "What are you really?"

He matched her smile.

"I'm sorry I can't answer that question, ma'am. But if I may, let me just say you can rest easy knowing the person responsible for the deaths of your associates has been brought to justice. I think their souls will find peace, just like you wanted. Maybe it doesn't mean much, but please accept my apology—on Okazaki's behalf as well—that they had to lose their lives before justice could be done. For what it's worth."

Mrs Itosu opened her mouth to respond—to wave off his apology, to thank him, to ask him what he meant—but thought better of it. It was not as though she would receive an honest response from him anyway.

Instead, she extended her hand between them, which Mitani shook gently. She had only a moment to wonder at the strange coolness of his flesh around hers before he faded back into the crowd.

She continued to scan the gathered faces for his or the boy's throughout the remainder of the event, but saw neither of them again.

—o—

The students carried their jackets over their shoulders as they walked up the seemingly endless flight of stairs to class under the summer sun. The breeze off the water carried their laughter up to where Izuru sat high above them on the balcony wall, like the cry of seagulls floating on the updrafts. They walked on, blissfully unaware of his presence there—blind to his form perched precariously on the very edge of the wall.

He might as well have been watching a scene out of his own past. The boy at the front of the pack that held himself so straight might have been Izuru himself in another life. And even though his shadow of a body had not aged in the three years since his death, these second-years still seemed so much younger to him now. And as for the school. . . .

Everything about it was different, and yet it was as if nothing had changed.

The chapel had been rebuilt: the replicas of medieval stained-glass windows that were broken in the fire had been replaced with something less expensive and more modern, and only if one looked closely would he see the charred marks on the part of the foundation they had been able to salvage. The fire that gutted the chapel—the fire in which Focalor, having taken full possession of Izuru's body, had been soundly eliminated—and all the tragedy that preceded it had not forced the school to close as Izuru once thought it might have. On top of the scars of that night a new class of students bustled about just like Izuru and his classmates had, if not entirely oblivious to the horrors of his year, then at least finding in those stories a sort of morbid amusement. Tales to tell gullible freshmen, about dismembered ghosts and illicit relations.

Strangely, the idea that Izuru's life had become someone else's urban legend left him feeling . . . numb. He wasn't sure how he should feel. Like there was a disconnect between how he had once gloomily expected to find this place and the lively living reality. He had expected to find reminders of his transgressions everywhere he turned, and instead. . . .

Instead he found himself staring at classrooms or ocean views or faux-Romanesque details that he once knew like the back of his hand, feeling like those days he had spent living among them had been just some vivid dream. They aroused in him none of the fear or pain or guilt he had come prepared for, and simply left him feeling so inexplicably, unimpressively hollow.

"I thought you never wanted to see this place again."

Izuru turned to see Mitani walking toward the edge of the balcony, gazing out at the bay even as he came to stop beside the boy. His hands in his pockets, the ocean breeze ruffling his tie and coattails and the hair that hung down into his eyes, for a moment Izuru was all but convinced they were alive again, professor and student at this school, and it was the last few years that had been some bad dream.

He wasn't sure anymore if he really missed it.

"It's like we've never left." The words just slipped from Izuru's lips, seeing Mitani like that. He looked around them. "Hell, like we were never here to begin with. They all go around with smiles on their faces and . . . Do you think anyone, any of the staff, would even remembers us—think they'd recognize us if we let them see us?"

Mitani chuckled bitterly. "Oh, I'm sure they'd remember, all right. Hard to forget. We disgraced the school—nearly burned it down—"

"And yet it's still standing, Sensei."

Izuru had said that easily enough—just like always—but perhaps it was their environment that made Mitani's already brittle smile fall. "You shouldn't call me that. You know I don't deserve it. After what I did . . . You should be ashamed to still call me 'sensei'."

The boy turned back to the vista of the bay at that. Gone was the self-loathing, the twinge of resentment such observations of Mitani's usually roused in him—gone was his impatience with his former teacher's own guilt. He could not help what Mitani thought of himself. But did Izuru feel ashamed?

"Never," he said simply.

And meant it. No more, no less.

He rose nimbly to his feet, digging his heels into the edge of the battlement and unfolding himself upright. The arms he stretched out like wings before hoping down to the cobblestones beside Mitani were less to steady him now than to feel the contours of the ocean breeze as it caught in the loose folds of his shirt, and nudged him away from the long drop to the stone steps below.

"Let's go, Sensei," he said, as though he had already decided.

Mitani hesitated. "Are you sure? We just got here. I mean, I understand, of course, if it's still too much—"

But there was a smile on Izuru's face as he turned.

"It's not that. It's just that there's nothing left for me here anymore."

This place can't hurt me anymore. Not unless I let it, and I won't. I refuse to be undone like that.

"I don't know what I was expecting to find, but whatever it was, it isn't here."

"And that's why you're smiling."

Mitani knitted his brows, perplexed, and it just made Izuru's smile even wider. It had been so long. That must have been the reason for his old professor's confusion. But Izuru could not say what had brought on this smile, only that in his numbness he felt strangely giddy, like he were somehow full of helium. Somehow lighter.

Yes, that must have been it precisely. When they left here, he could finally leave this school and all the heavy stone bricks that made up its memory behind him, one less burden to weigh him down. He could not say he was going to miss it, either. Even if it was only one cross he no longer had to carry out of several more he did, already he was finding it that much easier to breathe.

"Come on, Sensei. Let's go home."


End file.
